SoaP

You know it’s late at night when conversations like the following develop:

“It’s kismet!”

“Kiss who?”

“Not me!”

“Fuck.”

“Not that either!”

There is a bottle of maple syrup on my kitchen counter, won yesterday night at the NPC Pub Quiz. It is glass and allegedly modeled on the State of Liberty and amber with sugary goodness, looking in all respects so much like an Oscar that I can’t help but pick it up every time I walk by and intone, “I’d like to thank the Academy…” They say that those who pick up an Oscar replica and fake like they’re accepting the award for best supporting actor tend to be passive-aggressive; those who accept for director, type-A personalities; those for best actor or actress, ego-driven. I tend to rehearse my best-screenplay speech, so I’m not sure where that places me, other than mildly delusional.

M. and I did a read-through of the screenplay on Wednesday night. What I thought was a pretty decent first draft is going to need its proverbial flooring torn up and replaced, particularly in Act II. It reads too much like stuff that’s come before. In the meantime, a couple of freelance projects and work have been chewing up my time. I’ve become cynically insurgent against one project, seeding it with lines such as, “Ronald Reagan’s greatest achievement was remaining relentlessly chipper in the face of the threat of Soviet hegemony.”

It’s either that or sparing my sanity by watching the new fan-edited trailer for next year’s shoo-in for Best Picture, “Snakes on a Plane.” Actually, I'm enjoying how the term 'Snakes on a Plane' has started to register in the popular lexicon as a sort of geeky 'C'est la vie,' a kind of shorthand for a sense of existential resignation.