Southern Living: Los Angeles

No, not the magazine your grandmother clips delicious butter-driven Paula Dean recipes from or some kind of ridiculously plausible Law and Order spin-off. I'm talking about my number one lifestyle concern about my fast-approaching move to Los Angeles.

Traffic? Nah, I'll keep some golf clubs in the trunk and figure that out quickly enough.

Smog? I drink around 19 diet cokes a day, so the aspartame will probably kill me first.

Ridiculous new hipster wardrobe? Who are we kidding, I can't wait!

Saturdays in the fall DON'T revolve around SEC football?!? NOW we have a problem.

I traveled to L.A. just after Thanksgiving to see some film school friends, reconnect with some industry contacts, and get a feel for the city. Weirdly enough, I happened to travel on the single most important day of the year: THE DAY OF THE IRON BOWL.

(If you're lost, ask anyone around you what the biggest rivalry in the history of college sports is. If you're alone because you read blogs instead of talking to people, here's a little background.)

To sum it up without bias*, Alabama has a long tradition built on some coach who ruined houndstooth forever and found success in the sixties and seventies that sent Alabama flags flying in trailer parks all over the southeast and drew in bandwagon fans like first cousins to a Tuscaloosa wedding chapel.

Auburn University, meanwhile, has been a shining beacon of all the good American values, and only a few of the redneck ones. While becoming the dominant football school over the past couple of decades (look it up), the good people of Auburn found it in their hearts to help their neighbors in Tuscaloosa rebuild after a devastating tornado, even after a crazed Alabama fan did this:

Sir Charles' ending quote says it all. I come from a really cool, sometimes messed-up place where this rivalry is instilled into your being from day one. How am I to survive LA's blase attitudes about football? (If you guessed, "Quit being such a fanatic" then you haven't been paying attention.) Seriously, ESPN's College Game Day will start at 8 AM! They think USC, a school that gets its pick of recruits from all of California and rarely has to face real opposition, is a powerhouse. Ask poor Matt Leinart or even Reggie Bush how that's working out for them in the pro's.

Thankfully, I found Big Wangs. No, surprisingly, I am not referring to a hip new west coast Asian fuison cafe that only serves orange, gluten free fare. To my delight, Big Wangs in LA is exactly what it sounds like in any other city: an awesome sports bar that serves "big wangs" and shows every SEC game on big screens. LA's Auburn club hosts weekly game watching parties, and suddenly it felt like home! The place vibrated with the hum of "Waaaaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrr.........EAGLE! HEY!!!" at every kickoff and I felt my brethren around me become increasingly depressed and intoxicated as the game wore on. Whatever, this year was a victory lap. Wait til Chizik's recruits filter in and everyone meets a developed Kiehl "Baby Cam" Frazier next year.

My LA friends loved it despite having no tie to the rivalry and were thankful I'd introduced them to a  new favorite sports bar. They were of course highly entertained by my alternating joy/rage strokes, one of which nearly concussed a waitress passing by. I began to apologize but then realized she was wearing an Alabama shirt, so I said, "What are you doing with that shirt on in our section?!?" Shocked and offended, she turned to the Auburn fan next to me for sympathy. Of course he was a gentleman and said, "Oh, I'm sorry, you hurt your hea---GET THAT SHIRT OUT OF OUR SECTION! WAR DAMN EAGLE!"

Ahhh, it's good to find home away from home.        








*Extreme, unsubstantiated, and/or totally "false" information may be included. WDE.

Phluke

“Stop saying stupid sh*t.”          

--loving girlfriend, we'll call her Garlie Cotlieb

This has become a fairly regular refrain around either of our Dallas apartments. Don’t worry, she doesn’t say it in the mean way. Usually. It just tends to come out when I talk about Faithful, a screenplay that I’ve been working on for way too long (coming to 4-D holographic screens everywhere, Fall 2062!) and say things like, “I would only need about a $2 million budget to make Faithful a genuine career-starter. Can’t wait to watch it at Cannes next year!” or “When I write with Christopher Nolan on his next project…” or “When I have a leer jet piloted by a Victoria’s Secret model, I can work in both Nashville and L.A. Won’t be long now…” She says her new catch phrase with an understandably exasperated tone that conveys, “Normally your child-like ideas and naïve conviction that they will actually happen are adorable, but seriously, you’re being an idiot.”

Carlie is always excited and encouraging when I have a real idea and share it with her.  When I have been perpetuating scenarios in my brain that make less sense than Nancy Grace competing on Dancing With The Stars however, she's not afraid to call me on it.

SIDE NOTE: What kind of world are we living in when Janet Jackson, during one of her more attractive seasons, brings on heavy fines and gets banned from the super bowl for life by slipping out of her clothes, but when Nancy Grace does it, no biggie?!?

Seriously?

Right, where was I? Every now and then, Carlie and I’s very different brains collide in a perfect storm of probability vs. slim possibility, sensibility vs. high risk, Dunphy vs. Dunphy (see: Modern Family), and the results are typically hilarious to one of us and aggravating to the other. It's like a rigged carnival game that she can't win because the carney operator doesn't know the rules. Speaking of Modern Family, Carlie recently donned me with the nickname Phluke because my brain is a perfect mix of Phil Dunphy and his son Luke, which is simply to say the three of us have the same brain, we’re just different ages. Sorry parents, try to convince yourselves it’s not true while watching this clip. You can’t do it.

Carlie’s the one who immediately sees risks and so-called “consequences,” and I’m the one who helps her turn her brain off with nonsensical stories when she keeps herself up worrying that she isn’t getting enough sleep and talking about how little sleep she's getting. She gets me out of the grocery store alive. I save her from excelling at everything all the time and keep her laughing, preferably at my expense. It’s a give and take. We’re like two sides of a coin. Carlie’s side is on a coin that someone used to aid in the fulfillment of a goal, and my side is on a different coin of equal value that someone dropped in the crack between the driver’s seat and the center console that's just living for the ride and will eventually be there when you need that extra change at Chik Fil A.

Miraculously, all of these differences make us truly complementary. That’s the only possible way we could have dated happily for SIX YEARS! That’s more than 25% of our lives….wait…25/6….yep, the math checks out. That and we’re totally photogenic (see below). As we face the monster of long distance yet again, it’s easy to worry we’re moving backwards. Ok, it's a little easier for Carlie since I refuse to learn how to worry. Tough as it will be, I think being apart for my first months in Los Angeles will put things in perspective for us and remind me that I can't take my time getting places in LA the way I have in previous endeavors (learning to ride a bike, learning to read, giving up wetting the bed, graduating from college....all the major milestones). People like me need people like Carlie to stay grounded and focused, and people like Carlie need people like me to keep from being too grounded or focused. I'm sure we can keep helping each other with a few states in between us, but hopefully we won't have to for long. As you can see, we're going places:

On segways. 

Battlefield: Los Angeles

Oh yeah, there’s a blog here.

I’d forgotten. I’ve been busy not writing enough over the past year and a half since graduating from college in May 2010. Or “when hell freezes over” as my fourth grade teacher Mrs. Pointkowski called it. It’s ok, I’m pretty sure she was drunk when she said it. Well, at least the first time.

Anyway, as a world-class procrastinator-perfectionist with a learning disorder who takes forever to read or write yet aims to become a professional screenwriter, I figure I’ll take up blogging again. Every screenwriting book I’ve ever read the back cover of stresses the importance of writing all the time no matter what, whether it’s real work on a screenplay or self-gratifying drivel like this blog. I’ve done a lot of staring at my macbook in various Dallas-area Starbucks and far too little writing, so let’s do some blogging! At the very least I’ll not be lying when I say, “I’ve been writing all day.” At best, I’ll get over this “staring at the screen for hours” thing, tap into a more fluid writing style that I didn’t know was there, and maybe even entertain those few internet wayfarers who wander over to this blog by mistake in their search for literary articles and/or adult websites that contain “streaming” in the name. All are welcome!

Oh yeah, and the people who actually know me and care about me can stop complaining that I don’t ever verbalize what I’m thinking, because I’ll do my best to keep this blog true to its title. Well actually I guess I’ll just be typing, not speaking. Hmm. Ok if you’re one of those people, have your computer’s text-to-speech app read this to you in one of its exotic monotone accents. Problem solved.

I’m writing this in terminal D of the Salt Lake City airport, waiting for my connector flight to San Diego. I’m going to meet my parents there for Thanksgiving and then heading to Los Angeles for a recon trip. Oh right, I didn’t say this yet: I’m moving to Los Angeles in January to be a real boy!

Wait, I mean “film professional.” After too many years in Dallas, it’s time to put up or shut up. Don’t get me wrong, I love Dallas! But I think I’ll always feel like a student there, like I’m dependent on my parents. Even if I got a real job in the Big D, I think a change of scene is in order to jolt me forward. Also, see earlier in this post where I said I want to be a professional screenwriter. Those live in L.A. or are Blockbuster employees in some other town, and Blockbuster franchises are dropping like flies (thanks for nothing, Goldman Sachs!).

So I’m off to La La Land to reconnect with old contacts, meet new ones, and observe the hipsters to see what kind of awesome new clothes my wardrobe has in its future. I’m hoping burlap makes a comeback. Fortunately for me, my good friend and collaborator Rian Hawkings* grew up in Los Angeles and can house me for a few days while I discover "the Angeleno way" (This fall on TNT starring Jennifer Love Hewitt and Johnny Knoxville!). A few days is all it will take, right? Ok good. He and I have been working together with several other SMU film alums under the banner Institution One in Dallas on several music videos, industrials, shorts, and feature films. It’s been a blast and we’ve done some great work so far, so I really hope we can keep it up while surviving the war of attrition that will be L.A. I’ll be looking for any internship or P.A. (production assistant) work that might be remotely educational and/or will help build valuable connections. And of course I’ll have to keep writing, and write more efficiently and effectively than I’ve done before, cramming in an hour here and there whenever I’m not getting someone coffee to survive. Sounds pretty daunting and probably illogical, but after 25 years of being a white guy in America with all my needs covered for me, I’ve been fully convinced that anyone can do anything, no matter what! Don’t worry, you’ll hear it when the shoe drops. It will be loud, and I will be crying. Like a child.

I encourage you to check back in often, especially when your oppressive office job feels like too much. I’ll be here with frequent updates* reminding you why you were smart to take that job in the first place….bring on the smog, traffic, and egomaniacal studio execs, Tinsel Town. I'm ready.

*Name changed to maintain anonymity.

*Frequent = 3 in the next week, 2-5 for all of 2012.