Shreddin'

My wife and I are going up to Flagstaff this weekend for a bit of relaxation, and hopefully some shreddin'. That would be on the snowboard. Hopefully the serene, relaxing conditions will spark motivation and creativity for The Study of Leonard Hughes. I need to get going on that.

Here are some direct links to download the Animatrix trailers:
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720x480

You're welcome!

Tall, pink and fuzzy

Once again, I put off watching The Joy Luck Club. To be perfectly honest, I'm in a good mood today, and I don't want to ruin that. So as a result, I'm abstaining from watching The Joy Luck Club. Why do I have to watch it? School project...it has nothing to do with personal interest. Maybe part of the reason why I'm not watching it is because I don't feel like doing work on Spring Break.

No prob on the tips Gabe! The nice Flag atmosphere might give you some help in writing the story. Sweet guitar! This reminds me folks, I still owe Gabe some money for that guitar. Payday comes soon, payday comes soon...
After I pay Gabe off I may go out to a guitar store and buy some other things, particularly an amp. However, I really really want to buy a guitar strap, particularly a pink fuzzy one. It'll be horrible looking, but that's why I'm buying it! Nah, common sense will probably hit me at the last moment and I'll buy a strap that isn't so...lively.

Seagull

Thanks for the tips, Brock! I need to start carrying a notebook and pen around. I'm trying to write it at work because I actually have the time there. However, the atmosphere is probably not the best for writing a creative story. In fact, it's probably having a negative affect. I have a notebook with a few pages of song lyrics that I mostly wrote while on vacation. If that's what I need to do, write while on vacation, I'll have it done in a few years! No, I should be able to do more if I try writing in different situations. I may have a good start this weekend. I'll be going up to Flagstaff for a brief vacation. Perhaps I can get started there.

Well, thanks to Brock purchasing my guitar, I was able to purchase a nice acoustic guitar on Ebay. I didn't want to spend a ton of money on one. The Seagull brand was highly recommended to me for it's excellent quality, yet low prices. I had the opportunity to play one yesterday and I was very impressed! Now hopefully in a year or less, I can get a Gibson SG Standard.

I know three kinds of Karate...

Jujitsu, Aikido, and regular Karate... Let's talk about Hard Eight (aka: Sydney) for a second...

Now, first and foremost, aside from Punch Drunk Love, Hard Eight is easily the Paul Thomas Anderson film with the most loveable characters, in my opinion at least.
I'd been meaning to watch this movie for quite a while after Gabe let me borrow it, but I finally got around to watching it from start to finish today. Aside from an interesting and unique story, I really liked the characters in the film, mostly because of the great relationship between Sydney and John, the two gamblers. Of course, the ironic twist of Sydney, the surrogate father, being the killer behind John's real father is what really sold me on this movie. Aside from that I've been pretty mellow today, however, I am nearly done with The Catcher in the Rye.

I've also been thinking about Gabe's story, and I started flipping around in a few of my books for various strategies to help cope with writer's block. I don't mind starting the story out or anything, but I figured that maybe Gabe might like to see a few of my favorite moves that I use to cope with writer's block. Heck, maybe other people will get a kick out of this stuff too:

• Find the place that best suits your writing: In other words, maybe you write best in front of a blaring TV with the vacuum cleaner whooshing and the phone ringing off the hook. As a writer, I often find that my worst material comes about when I'm sitting there in dead, quiet silence. With a slow atmosphere comes slow thoughts, and I need lots of loud, disturbing, shattering noise in order for my thinking to be in check with my writing.



• Ignore the Internal Editor: The Internal Editor is the dude who walks around in your mind telling you "this sentence sucks!" or "That's one heck of a crappy way to start out your paragraph there...” Ignore the little dork, just sit down and write what comes into your mind. Later on you can go back, read your work over, and then make changes where you see fit. Once, I had to write a paper for Communications class, and I was dreading it like there was no tomorrow. I just didn't want to write the paper, even though I had gotten excited about the assignment and even gone so far as to attempt writing it several times. The problem was that I would sit down to write the paper and then I'd get to think, "No that’s stupid. The teacher is going to see right through that corny sentence." Eventually, because of the deadline, I had to just write the paper if I wanted to at least get points for turning the essay in on time. Surprisingly, I did pretty well on the essay and the teacher liked it. The point is, ignore the Internal Editor, this is some of the best advice I've come across in any strategy book I've ever read.



• Do everything but write: Often, when I'm trying to write something out and I need to get thinking about how the story or essay is going to go, I do everything but write the paper. I listen to music, I walk around, I watch TV, but while doing these things I think about writing the essay and how it's going to start out, how it will develop and how it will end. Then, when I have stuff I like, I sit down and write some of it, and then I go off and do something else while I start to think about the next part I'm going to write. It can be confining for me to just sit down and expect myself to churn out 5'000 words in the blink of an eye. Unless you have a flash of inspiration, you can't even churn out 800 that way. It bothered me to no end when I found out that I couldn't sit down and write out a whole book or paper in one sitting; I had reasoned "If the great writers portrayed in film and TV can pull that off, so can I!"
  
  I can't...
  

Writer's block sucks, I've encountered it plently of times, and I hate it. You'll overcome it though, I know it.

Day by day, I replay . . .

The Catcher in the Rye! What a coincidence that Brock was listening to Moving Mountains when the beginning lyric of Optimist Honor Roll is "Day by day, I replay The Catcher in the Rye." It must've been subliminal.

I've just started work on the story for the new blog The Study of Leonard Hughes and I've already encountered writer's block. Damn! I may need Brock to start it out. I also need to change the site a little. It changes colors but some of the colors are too psychedelic. I'm trying to get rid of that without blowing up the template. So, if you want a preview, you can check it out here.

There, There, in my Chair, chair

So it seems I neglected to blog yesterday... bad Brock.

Currently, I only know how to play this one power chord on the guitar, and I don't play it very well. Nevertheless, that single chord gets practiced often, and I now have a new activity to keep me occupied on this spring break. So far I've just spent time sitting in my chair, either strumming that guitar or reading The Catcher in the Rye.

Good news did come in the form of Radiohead however, when I found out that their new single would be the primal, electric, There, There. Huzzah!

-Brock

Brock Rock

Yesterday Brock acquired a sunburst Fender Mexican Strat from yours truly. It is his first guitar, and hopefully, not his last. So, congratulations to Brock on moving one step closer to rockstardom!

Yes, the Sci-Fi story blog is almost ready. It just needs a few tweaks. It will be slow since it is a story-in-process. So, we'll let you know when we post to it. Each post could be a few paragraphs, or a few pages! You'll never know and neither will we!

Albums listened to last week:
Briad - Frame and Canvas Hmm, Brock and I are on the same page!
Braid - Age of Octeen
The Appleseed Cast - Mare Vitalis

Oscar winnin' Super-Force

Well, I think it's easy to say that the greatest snub to happen at the Oscars this year isn't the complete lack of Punch-Drunk Love support, but rather the fact that Gabe didn't get the bleacher seat. Of course, it goes without saying that I'll take Gabe along to the awards if I ever get nominated. I think usually a nominated director takes his or her spouse along, but I'll have to bring Gabe. However, maybe we'll both go on accord of our talent as a writer/director/actor super-force...

So the new blog is coming along pretty well, but we haven't made any posts yet. The second it's ready I'm sure Gabe will want to let you all know, but we're still working on it. We've picked out a cool format for the blog actually, one that works well with the concept that this will be a story blog. Gabe even has a little headliner picked out for the blog that gives the reader the run-down on the story's background. It's gonna be great.

This week I was listening to Braid's Frame and Canvas frequently, as a matter of fact I'm listening to it right now while I write this post. The Casket Lottery's Moving Mountains was also in heavy rotation, "Saw you laugh it off..."

I'll pop in tomorrow or something, see you guys and gals then!