Confession

ust finished writing the first draft of a Casablanca prequel screenplay.

That is all.

The October Challenge & Black Swan Sandy

ast month I challenged myself to start and finish a screenplay. I can now announce that I have written a complete draft of that screenplay. It will take some revising, but I am, for the most part, content with where it starts and how the story does not stray from its premise. Following an old teacher's advice, I pushed on throughout never stopping to go back. Rather, I kept a list of items to address, flesh out, include and fix which I'll tackle in the second draft.

Up next? Another month, another screenplay. I'm also editing the cognitive psyche kids' stories I wrote. One, pertaining to Black Swans, is particularly apt in light of Hurricane Sandy. Some folks said they didn't evacuate because they had lived in their neighborhoods for decades and had no experience with such a terrible storm and so found it hard to believe such a thing could either exist or do so much damage. They couldn't imagine such a storm because they had no first hand experience with one. It didn't matter what others told them be they meteorologists or folks who had experienced such weather elsewhere; those who had yet to experience such a storm themselves stuck to their pre-existing bias against a storm of such size.

Needless to say, that's a strong and potentially deadly bias. If we can become aware of that bias and loosen the grip we have on it, hopefully we can save some lives and stop making mistakes we seem to repeat generation after generation.

Extra Savvy Sketches + Text

s. Concepcion has successfully updated the first round of sketches for Cookie-Wise Pablo which you can now view below. Also included are the 16 corresponding couplets so it's less of a silent movie without the subtitles.

1) A cookie now or two later?

There may be no question greater.

2) That one right there is so enticing.

But a second one? That's better than icing!

3) "I will wait for two!" Pablo exclaimed. 

"You'll eat that one before I return!" Missy Monkey proclaimed.

4) "I will not!" Pablo disagreed.

"We shall see!" said Missy Monkey.

5) "Then hold this while I get the other.

When I return you can have another."

6) In his hands Pablo held the cookie

which quickly began to drive him kooky. 

7) It felt so soft and smelled so choice

that Pablo's mouth became quite moist.

8) His breathing grew heavy and his eyes grew large.

Where had that monkey gone, to Mars?

9) "I have to do something or the monkey will win!"

Pablo said as he mussed up his hair for inspiration.

10) All the static in his hair created a charge in the air. 

"Eureka! I've got it!" Pablo cheered with flair.

11) "Missy Monkey, two can play this game!"

Putting the cookie down, Pablo just walked away.

12) He walked down the path and he walked up the hill.

He walked by the water and he walked under a windowsill.

13) He walked through the Great Park

he walked and he walked until it got dark.

14) He came to a bench and Missy Monkey,

but wait, hold on, where was the other cookie?

15) "I just couldn't wait!" Missy mumbled

her mouth full of cookie crumbles.

16) "I did!" Pablo said with pride

as animals from the park slipped him Missy's cookies on the sly.

From the Engine Room

his post is the 200th for the Little Engine which first pulled out of the station in December 2007. Started as a way of publicly shaming myself to consistently make progress on whatever literary project I was working on at the time, the Engine continues to chug along allowing me to think through stories, characters, approaches and to push forward.

Every once in a while I check out the Engine's stats. Lately, a few numbers have caught my eye. First, readership is up about 33%. I assume this is either the result of worthy reading, cleverly placed hyperlinks and labels on my part...or what we may refer to as the "Pre-Date Internet Creep Check." Thank you, ladies.

Second, the Engine consistently gets readers from Russia. The Engine's most popular post since it's inception? A piece on Chinese drinking songs. I have reason to believe that the two are directly related.

Third, how do folks find the Engine? More often than not they search my name. There are some, though, who have searched my name + chapstick + poem. This is a very specific search by people who are most likely up to no good; probably even less good than the Russians. I know what they're looking for, but unfortunately for them, it has never appeared in this blog. And, apparently, anywhere else on the internets. Till now.

Here now, from A Midas Spring (2005), the answer to "my name + chapstick + poem", "I'd Smile More, But I Lost My Chapstick":

I'd smile more,
but I lost my chapstick.
I'd say more,
but the corners of my lips are cracked.
I am at the mercy
of tubed petroleum.

Glasses of milk prove deficient
and pacifiers socially so.
Lollipops are a viable alternative.
Your kiss may only add salt to this wound.

I can learn sign language
or I can gesticulate my way through.
But neither
bring the fluency
of a well-greased grin.

For those interested in the beats put down the night 'Chapstick' premiered in the East Village, peep DJ Sleep.

Project Updates: Cookie-Wise Pablo got a second round of sketches which I'll post soon with content and the Any Color You Want screenplay chugs along as it nears its October 31st deadline. All in all, progress.

The Page That Proves I Exist

oments after the Tigers eliminated the Yankees, I sat down to make progress on the Any Color You Want screenplay for the second time today. I wrote about eight lines all of which were about as good as the Yankees' swings at Fister, Sanchez, Verlander and Scherzer. I packed it in early, frustrated and without a good idea of what the next line would be, never mind the next 60 pages.

It's nights like these you'd think I'd consider hanging it up for good. Admittedly, I've been winging it lately with only vague prep done in advance, assuming it'll just come to me - if not in this draft, then in draft number nine. Creative writing, especially longer pieces (90+ pages), risks failure with every line. It is humbling. When done right, I'd argue, it's exhausting.

So why continue?

After watching a rather pale and very bearded dude for a year write from a distance, a beautiful woman once penned a poem that she handed over shortly before we parted ways. In it she included a question that has motivated me ever since. The question? "...and where's the page that proves you exist?" I'd like to think she was not referring to my long form birth certificate.

I write for a number of reasons. Writing allows me to flesh out my thoughts. It's cheaper than therapy. And novel ideas provide a fantastic high. I also write so that one day I can scribble, "The page that proves I exist," in her dedication.

Savvy Sketches

ood news on the Hooey Savvy front: Stephanie Concepcion of Staten Island has submitted her first series of sketches for Cookie-Wise Pablo. Each sketch corresponds with a couplet from the story. In return, I've submitted my thoughts and suggestions to keep the ball rolling. Here's a first look.

O captain! My captain!

eath. Taxes. And the New York Yankees. Three things I can pencil in every year.

When asked why I like baseball, a game some complain is too slow, is boring, doesn't have enough action, I allude to Bart Giamatti's essay, "The Green Fields of the Mind":

"It breaks your heart. It is designed to break your heart. The game begins in the spring, when everything else begins again, and it blossoms in the summer, filling the afternoons and evenings, and then as soon as the chill rains come, it stops and leaves you to face the fall alone. You count on it, rely on it to buffer the passage of time, to keep the memory of sunshine and high skies alive, and then just when the days are all twilight, when you need it most, it stops."

And:

"Whatever the reason, it seemed to me that I was investing more and more in baseball, making the game do more of the work that keeps time fat and slow and lazy. I was counting on the game's deep patterns, three strikes, three outs, three times three innings, and its deepest impulse, to go out and back, to leave and to return home, to set the order of the day and to organize the daylight."

More than any other sport, baseball mirrors our lives in its dailyness and in its grueling schedule. We wake up, go to work and return home in the same way baseball players run out to their positions inning after inning, day after day and return home afterward. More than any other sport, the fans can identify with the players' long season and not only wish them success, but survival through one year to the next. The game's parallel existence mirrors our own continued existence.

Fans of all baseball teams are free to claim this parallel. Few fans, though, can make a claim for immortality through their teams. Every year teams such as the Cubs, the Red Sox and the Yankees stay in the same location and wear the same uniforms they extend their lives past the lengths of our own. And in the same vein as "you don't have to be faster than the bear, just faster than the other guy to not get eaten", anything older than you or your direct memory is that much closer to immortality.

A few years ago Brian Cashman, the general manager of the Yankees said, and I'm paraphrasing, "Our fans count on the Yankees on a daily basis." I understood that to mean a few things. First, no matter how crappy our day, the Yankees will end it well. Second, no matter how unfair the day, the Yankees will play the game the right way and in winning, will (in a very small and personal way) level the scales of justice. Third, no matter how tempting the short cut, the high standard of the Yankees  -and their subsequent success - will give us something to emulate.

Cashman spoke of the entire franchise, but he could have been speaking about just one player: Derek Sanderson Jeter.

The Captain injured his ankle last night and it seems he will miss the rest of the playoffs. Saying he will be missed is an understatement. I refuse to write his eulogy today: That's like making his Yankeeography in 2002 (which they did) as there's more to come.

Some may argue that the Yankees and their fans have hit Giamatti's "stop." Even Whitman's poem, "O Captain! My Captain!" does not end well for its leader. Nor did it for Mr. Keating in Dead Poets Society who also invoked Uncle Walt. But rather than sulk in loss, Keating's students atop desks picked up the mantle of captain, each of their own ship.

No, the game continues. And last I checked, the Stadium is still in the Bronx and the Yankees still wear pinstripes. Jeter will play another day. The Yankees will play today.