SCAM MACHINE

yo i’m feeling real good right now wanna blog about it

In the past few days…

- My dear friend Mike taught me how to dance. Like, with a guy. Specifically with him. And I like, didn’t trip or anything, and he said I did good (and seemed to mean it?!), and it was fun! For once in my life I felt like a REAL LADY.

- My best friend Lauren and I went on an adventure in Park Slope where we encountered many people we knew - including a slew of comedians and a goddamn hippie commune. We lost a bet with Kevin Barnett who dared us not to fall in love with Justin Bieber after watching Never Say Never, and Jordan Carlos told me I look like a young Anne Bancroft, which I’ll accept because I have in fact seduced a younger man before.

- I ate the best stoner food in the history of stoner food - chicken and fried rice with goddamn FRENCH FRIES MIXED INTO IT, followed by a cold, syrupy pancake. It sounds weird but just trust me you guys.

- I worked with Hugh Jackman! Motherfuckin Wolverine! He is insanely kind and dashing and enjoys cheap burritos that were bought for the crew more than the $40 dried fruit plate that was bought specially for him. Whatta guy.

- Apparently Madonna (Motherfuckin Madonna!) was shown this episode of Very Mary-Kate while on set for a recent music video and thought it was funny. She liked something I produced. My brain exploded. Then I went home and made out with my True Blue poster.

- Anders and I increased our credit card debt by signing up for a screenwriting workshop that will force me to stick to my resolutions and (at least partially) get me over my fear of sucking - kind of like therapy for struggling writers. I have a great feeling about this one - in the first class the instructor referenced Withnail and I, which is one of my all-time favorite films that no one ever references ever (except British people, who don’t really count). Already I’ve been thinking about some of my script ideas differently… I’m excited to see my progress over the next 4 weeks!

xoxo 

fulfilling new year’s resolutions step one: writer’s workshops

After the shit storm that was 2011, I am hell-bent on making 2012 a stellar year.

My list of New Year’s resolutions:
-exercising more than once a week
-staying single until May (seems arbitrary, I know)
-finishing at least one of the screenplays I’ve started. 

My first step to achieving this was to sign myself up for several random, FREE writing workshops all over the city. I decided to do this after two different people recommended I try them out in the same week - seemed fortuitous and a good motivator. I’ve got like 3 or 4 to attend and had my first one last night. It was great!

Ela Thier’s Independent Film School was 3 hours long, quirky, entertaining, neurotically Jewish, and very helpful. She got us to talk to strangers about our writing and gave us lots of helpful exercises to aid in free writing and defeating writer’s block. Some of the things she suggested, although mildly eccentric, I think might really help - don’t bother with outlines and write long-hand for the first draft. Her reasoning was that we get too tripped up over thinking about structure and self-editing on a computer because of how pristine it looks; in my case she is TOTALLY RIGHT. I have a genius writer friend who writes long-hand and I always thought he was a tool for doing so, but now I get it.

The most encouraging thing she said was an anecdote she got from a former Olympic-training roommate of hers, and I like this because it applies to TWO of my New Year’s goals. ”The difference between an Olympic athlete and someone who walks 10 minutes every day is very small. The difference between someone who walks 10 minutes every day and someone who does nothing is huge.”