Welcome Gentle Readers

This blog tends to wander from its main purpose -- updates on my fiction. I do have updates and excerpts of my work. But I also write about my obsessions -- food, friends and pop culture and my weird life in Los Angeles. Enjoy!

Sunday, January 06, 2008

Dopplers, Tree Mutilation, Brad and Angelina

Warning: If you find yourself here via a google search for such things as TV shows or films, recipes or cities, this blog has some facts. However, this blog is one author’s very twisted musing on many weird things. It is sometimes graphic in content. If you read on, don’t write to yell at me.


Ringing in the New

It was out with the old and in with the new. I kinda like that tree photo. We may use it for next year’s Christmas Card. Jon and I spent a quiet New Year’s Eve. I was really tired from who knows what, and Jon was obsessing with Legos Star Wars. That was my fault though. I gave it to him. New Year’s day involved tree mutilation and undecorating the house. We were all set to get back to work.

The weirdness began almost immediately. Strange things were happening in Craig’s yard again. Past strangeness include the discovery of a large, red McCaw parrott who addressed Craig as Lucky and Jack Nicholson having an argument with a woman that Craig did not know. On each of these occasions, Craig was en route to a job, so he had no time to ask what was going on. The oddities would always be gone upon his return. The new oddness was from a homeless woman who was the 1956 prom queen of Palisades High. She was screaming profanity in his yard and threatening to have her prom date beat up Craig and the other tenants of the building. I suggested that Craig put up a web cam to capture the oddities. Apparently, there are things going on while he is at work that he never sees though there if often peculiar evidence left behind. If he does, I will provide a link.

Dooplers and Weather Woes

For a city that has very boring weather most of the year, Los Angeles local news stations have a lot of high powered weather equipment. Most involve the word doppler. The least doppler intensive – at least by the name they use – is Live Weather Doppler Plus at Channel 4. Channel2 has Sky View Doppler Radar with Futurecast. That sounds both impressive and sci-fi. But the winner seems to be Channel 7’s Live Mega Doppler 7000 HD with forecaster Dallas Raines. I am not making this up. The problem is that when you have all this equipment and not a lot to do most of the year, actual storms make these forecasters and their stations go absolutely insane. The rain storm of the last few days was really bad. We didn’t lose power, but I’ve never had to walk in wind that strong. And I haven’t had that cold a soaking since I lived back east. But the coverage may have well included the phrase 40 percent chance of the apocolypse. This feed was picked up by CNN and Yahoo. The first of the worried e-mails from Philly came in while we were still at work. In addition to figuring out how to get home without getting wacked by falling tree limbs and palm fronds (those things are heavy) or LA drivers who spin out in a drizzle, we had to worry about our folks worrying. Criminey! The forecasters or futurecasters remain unrepentent. I think they’re drooling of the notion that LA will have a real rainy season this year.

New Year, Old Writing Projects

We hit the ground running with the film projects. Our partner had a meeting about our whole catalogue yesterday. HE gets to sit at a table next to Brad and Angelina (he said she was incredibly beautiful without any make-up). We were at the eye doctor. OY! At any rate, the meeting went places that we didn’t expect. That’s one of the truisms we’ve learned out here: meetings never go the way they are planned. It went well, but the scripts that this agent was interested were ones that we thought were dead. And the big film project, The Privateers, is finally going to have a lead. Can’t say who yet, but I’ll be able to soon. Follow –up meetings to discuss development funding are scheduled for next week. We won’t get really excited until checks clear. We’ve been this far before. Meanwhile, we’re gearing up to shoot the shorts for Hidden Passion Films. If the weather isn’t really unstable, we should start shooting them bey the end of the month.

I should have a firm publishing date for A Soldier’s Fate in a couple of weeks. I’m back to pounding that out. It’s great to be haning out with Rik and Vincent for a while.

New Caption Contest next week!

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