Articles from the SomeplacElse Blog
I know. I know. It has been almost a month since last I blogged. Months are such a flaky way to measure time, let us use Weeks instead. It has actually been 4 weeks since my last entry. 4 weeks is only a month in February and then we screw that up every 4 years. ...
"No true fiasco ever began as a quest for mere adequacy"...the disaster of mythic proportion known as Elizabethtown. "If at first you don't succeed"... insert your reference here. I choose Miracle on 34th Street because it's preceded by "faith is believing in...
As I approach my 100th episode, (this is 92) I have been reflecting on the craft. The Pitchfest re-affirmed what I consider to be the writers prime directive, "distinguish YOUR work". All the query letters, log-lines, elevator-pitches, and publicity stunts in the...
Take 100+ Hollywood Production Types put them in a big room just down the road from Burbank Airport. The day before this, take 500 would be screenwriters with heads firmly in the clouds and whip them in to a frenzy by teaching them how to summarize their BIG ideas in...
I received and email from WhiteSmoke software today. I get a daily mailing from them containing tips, tricks and specials. For some reason, this one caught my eye. Are they serious? As you get older you allegedly write less and less? Back in the 60s I certainly...
In my email today is a message from the Buckminster Fuller institute announcing the winner of their 2009 Design Science Challenge. And, as was the case in 2007, I didn't win. Of course I didn't enter this year, so that may have impacted the judges decision. I...
In my closet is a large plastic container of "retired" T-shirts. You see I have a sentimental attachment to the sentiments expressed on these too-worn-to-wear-again cotton symbols of my persona. There are easily 4 dozen faded garments containing hundreds of very...
Pitch is defined as "to put, set, or plant in a fixed or definite place or position" but then it also means "to throw, fling, hurl, or toss". (Seems a bit oxymoronic) You can have perfect pitch, and you can pitch a perfect game. The roof above you has a downward...
On Saturday morning, I awoke to a plumbing incident and an apparently Spainish film with English subtitles. I chose the latter. It was called "Don't Tempt Me" and starred Penelope Cruz as an agent of the Devil competing for the soul of sleazy boxer with little moral...
When I was about 8 or 9 my best friend was a very asthmatic, non-conformist individual named Kenneth. Kenneth knew a lot of stuff the average 5th grader hadn't even been taught, and we were only in 4th grade. So, when I look back on my early education, I realize...
Long, loooong before there was an Ashton Kutcher or a CNN to tweat at us, the U.S. Post Office Department delivered between 700 and 800 million short text messages attached to some exotic and/or humorous imagery every year. These bursts of personal information were...
Last night I was making the final changes on a software module needed at my day job from the comfort of my den. My granddaughter was chasing something called webkin dollars from her computer. My daughter, the math teacher, was perusing her internet based gradebook...