Alien-free Alien 5 under Ridley/Ripley stewardship, one imagines to be inevitably titled simply Ripley? Colour me intrigued.

(No honestly: not only am I one of only six people who finds something of merit in each and every Alien movie, even Resurrection, but I do certainly feel there is much, much more landscape to that universe, featuring Ripley at any age, than we have seen so far. If anything, what cuts down 3 and 4 is their unwillingness to do what 2 did, and abandon 1's structure to really chart new territory in the existing mythos. They have their veins of that, the third film far more than the fourth, but the dogmatic necessity of sticking to the original paradigm keeps them pretty tethered.)

Christmas shopping always puts me in such a spectacularly foul mood. The way retail stores are laid out is the finest standing argument for why everything must eventually go online. But I digress.

Saw Jack Layton pronounce the word "parliament," live and in person! So I'm stroking that off the bucket list.

Plus, wrote a thing I actually really like.

Posted by tederick at 3:12 PM in goddamn politics & movies & the process
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Yesterday afternoon Daniel and Demetre rehearsed a few different versions of an idea I had written and now I have Frankensteined together an actual script using sticky tape and initiative. It will be my first movie in well over a year, and might even go to camera before the beginning of December (but barely). After rehearsing we also watched My Best Fiend, which is about Werner Herzog's relationship with an egomaniacal actor named Klaus Kinski, and also Werner Herzog Eats His Shoe, which is about Werner Herzog eating his shoe. I am going to be Werner Herzog for Hallowe'en. Daniel, who will be in Germany at the time, will be Klaus Kinski.

I also had banana bread ready when D & D came over, because it does not suck to work with me. I am doing more cooking - honest.

I was disappointed to learn that Sideshow has put their Lord of the Rings 12" figure line on hold, which basically means on cancelled. Apparently sales were weak. Kicking off with a shite Aragorn, charging $70 a head for hobbits, and those goddamned excruciating belt-loops on Faramir and Boromir... they've had some troubles. But boy, this Gandalf is pretty. I wish I could afford it. I'm sure they'll resuscitate the affair come Hobbit season, but I was rather hoping for opportunity for a Gandalf the White. Ah well. Seems rather strange to think that a couple of years from now around this time we're actually going to all go see another (kinda) Lord of the Rings movie... I wonder what that will be like.

Freezing my fingers clean off right now, actually typing with gloves on in my office. I will go home later, more writing, more VHS dumping to data, fixing the Final Cut Pro problem and maybe some editing of rehearsal footage. Getting back on track, big ugly gears, but moving.

Posted by tederick at 11:54 AM in foodin' & movies & pj's playground & tederick films & the process & toys!
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To briefly continue my pre-stated Ebert crush, the fella put into words on his blog what I've been noticing all of this year: since the loss of his voice, that man's writing (which didn't suck to begin with, by the way) has fucking skyrocketed in quality. It's sort of amazing, sort of beautiful, sort of sad. I guess it's just the way things go, but it makes me think a lot about what I'm doing, and what I'm writing, and what happens upon the redirection of rivers.

Not merely to draw attention to how cool I am - though I am cool - but I am now reading Bat-Manga!, which was a gift from Matty Price, and is magnificent. It has all the tropes of the 60s Batman TV series and the assorted Godzilla variations, i.e. there's still Clay-Face but now Clay-Face turns into a giant pterodactyl to fight Batman. At long last, we have discovered the road Chris Nolan should take in forging Batman Begins Some'Third. Batman in Japan! Japan-Batman! Bat-Japan-Man! They already crossed the Joker with Ichi the Killer, now imagine if they crossed the Riddler with the fuckin' Bugmaster? Well, had him played by Tadanobu Asano anyway. I'd watch that guy do anything. Domo. Domo arigato.

The thing I've been writing of late, a piddling 6-page 2-hander called Guy in the Sky, actually got taken to what I'd call a nearly successful half-assed draft yesterday, which means that I should write it at least twice more, but that if I do so, it might not suck. So that's something.

Posted by tederick at 11:26 AM in batman! & ebert & movies & the process
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Today, I hiked here:

And took this:

among others which I choose not to post out of sheer laziness.

Matty Price and I oughta do a better job of keeping track of where and when we hike, but in the meantime I will say only that I did not get outdoors nearly enough this year and I am rather disappointed with myself about that, but I guess I can only endeavour to do better next time. Cripes, there's a pool in my building that I haven't even been in yet. It's time for some focus.

D-Coc came over the other night and we went over some obstructions I have set up for myself for new writing projects, and today I started to try doing that old five-pages-a-day thing that worked so spectacularly well for a couple of years there and then started to really, really not work. It seems we are still in the "not work" phase of that, which translated in my journal to a very boldface MY WORDS ARE MUD out of sheer frustration. But who knows, maybe if I get enough gunk out on paper I'll eventually be able to not suck again. Until then, this feels like razorblades.

I am strongly considering giving up coffee, for environmental and personal reasons.

Posted by tederick at 8:12 PM in jedi antics & photoblog & the process
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Holy moly, it's the Star Treks.

The mythology is building around this thing but now that I'm looking at it I'm becoming less convinced, maybe because it just seems so damn goofy. Who knows, it might be brilliant. Right now though it sorta makes me feel like it's the biggest fan film ever. "Who do we know who looks a lot like Bones?" "Bob, from down at the general store." "Get him a uniform and a haircut!" Are people really gonna be wearing bright red smocks and flying around space in this? Ah, I'm bitching.

I actually wrote a thing earlier this week, just a short dialogue scene between two characters, just a little something I wanted to shoot maybe before the end of the season on my newfangled balcony thinger. It sucks. Oh god does it suck. I got it in my head a little while back that I should start resisting all the usual traps and ticks I lean on when writing anything, try to write something a bit less horrifyingly "me," and what I came out with actually sounds significantly worse, significantly more horrifyingly "me." It's fucking atrocious. I figure now that I should just write the whole thing again, every day from now until I genuinely manage to do it in a way that sounds like an actual movie and not just my usual bullshit. Not look at the previous drafts, not revise; just start again with a blank page every single day, and see if endless spontaneous repetition of page-one rewrites might let me shake loose the horrid voice that infects every single word of every single thing I do. And then, y'know, shoot that thing and write something bigger. I am fairly irritated with myself in the meantime.

Did you know there is a Boss's Day? Today is Boss's Day.

I have been circling a cold for more than a week, and would like either a decisive victory - a majority government, if you will - or for the stupid thing to just land on me and make me really sick for a few days and get it over with. My body is creaky and cranky and not getting enough exercise. And I'm apparently very busy. Frick! I just wanna snuggle and watch Lost.

Posted by tederick at 10:48 AM in movies & the process
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Yes, I am reading The Hobbit again, and yes, I am content.

I toyed with the idea of replacing my copy a few years back, when the LOTR tie-ins were at the height of their prettiness, as I had done with Narnia; fortunately I remembered (after a bit of fuss) that even pulp paperbacks from 1979 can have a little magic in them, and that old paper smells good. So here I am. There's quite a bit to the cloth bookmark with the bear on it that I use to mark my page, too, but I'll share that with you another time.

Suffice to say that right now I am moving things around in my mind, trying to make a story, which is a tricky thing if you haven't done it in a while and an even trickier thing when you feel the book has closed on a lot of old things and a lot of new, different things will have to start opening now. Still, today is fairly sunny and there are places to go and things to do during the day, and I'll blow some smoke rings by dusk on the old back deck. So that's something.

Posted by tederick at 8:40 AM in books & the process
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and I pity any one who isn't me (tonight, tra la la la la la la la la la la).

What are you doing today, Matt? Oh, y'know. Hanging around, making e.learning, eating Cracker Jack. Lemme tell ya something, Internet: Cracker Jack gets it done. Things aren't quite as hellfuck at the office as they've been for the last few weeks; it's probably just an eye in the storm, but it's a welcome eye. What I would really like to do is go on some serious vacation. It's on my mind a lot lately. Too bad I suck at organizing things. This is for why I need a large staff. (Of people, not wood. I have the latter already. And that's not even trying to be a double entendre - I literally have a wooden staff. For defence.)

The last few months have pretty much lame-ducked every single writing project I've had, though I am now within 30 pages of being done Snapdragon for the immediate nowness. And I've got a 3-issue dealie called "Today's the Day" that I'd like to start next. I tell ya though, that get-up-at-6-to-write thing was a lot easier before winter hit. Now it just seems like suicidal anti-sleepdom.

Strikewatch: day 2! If the whole thing gets concluded this week, does that mean they'd actually be able to finish out the Lost season? I really liked the premiere, with or without Spooky Christian in the chair. Here's my guess on the Oceanic Six:

• Jackwise J. Shephard
• Evangeline Katey
• Jabba
• Benjamin H. Gale, The Man In The Coffin
• Sunny Sucksalot
• and, oh, let's say, Moe.**

**Moe = one of the freighter people, a.k.a. the "he" in "he'll be waiting for me". Romance ahead!

I'lll tell ya something: Indiana Jones should not find proof of alien intervention in the dawn of the human race. That would be Dumb. Sure, a golden box that the Hebrews carried into battle to prove themselves God's chosen people which, when prompted, melts Nazi faces, is sorta dumb in its own way. But it's also classy.

Yeah, I'm pretty lame right now. But I feel like I'm improving.

Posted by tederick at 1:39 PM in 4-8-15-16-23-42 & dr. jones & j-o-b & the process
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I don't know what I'd do if they ever figured out I can sneak onto Tederick.com through the One Zone. Cry a lot, probably. I don't use it often, but there's something strangely reassuring in knowing my domain is immune to the Zone's security measures. Like being Spider-Man.

The thing about my drafting process is (and this will come as no surprise to anyone who's ever heard me, y'know, talk) is my stunning capacity to overwrite. So the process of revising the first five issues of Snapdragon (happening even now!) is really just one of pulling a whole bunch of extraneous lines and bits of business and even whole panels and pages clean out of the comic. I'm really one for saying something three times when it only needs to be said once. But it does mean I get to work lovely new ideas into the stew once the page count has been loosened up somewhat. This might come in handy on Terra.

I've had almost no time for writing for the last little while; feels like I've had almost no time for anything. This week was pretty damned rough, workwise. As advertised, January and February will be stunningly, stupidly busy - eight solid weeks of block-booked meetings (and sometimes double- and even triple-booked), an endless chain of tightly-wound deliverables, and two major projects that I am personally getting out the door, along with the half-dozen others I have my paint-stained fingers all mucked up in. It's gonna be exhausting, and my mood has not been terrific on the subject. It's just so damned dim and shady these days, I haven't been to yoga in a month, and I'm seriously contemplating joining a gym. Who the fuck am I?

Off-hours, however, remain tip-top. Last night me and Sarafina went to see The Savages, but before the movie had even started we decided we didn't really want to see The Savages. So we left. I'm quite happy about that; we went and had sushi and talked about ideas, and the plan change also later gave opportunity to conquer Superbad at long last. It was very pretty and otherwise not at all worthy of six separate attempts to see it (of course). Still, can't say fairer than watching movies in the dead of night with the girl. It does a spectacular job of disconnecting my mind from the web of intrigue that is my Outlook calendar.

Twelve pages of revision left, then Fight Club.

Posted by tederick at 6:09 PM in j-o-b & movies & the process
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On the other hand, my life is also quite frequently awesome. Big fancy glowing this-is-my-life awesome. Ain't quite all the way there yet but, man howdy, there are sunbeams peaking through.

You know that thing where you want to write a thing and then it's not quite there when you actually go to do it? I'm having that a lot lately. In one sense it's good because it feels like there's a half-dozen things waiting to pop (like dough!), and when they do pop I think they'll be good cookies. (Did I just fuck up a metaphor?) In the other sense, though, one of my key goals is to get to a point where I can just sit down and write no matter what. Like if I was writing Nancy Drew novels during the war or something - "thou shalt turn out sixty pages by Friday, Ms. Keene, or we'll replace you with another equally-anonymous ghost writer." I'm less interested in the spurts of stupendousness right now, and more curious about what it's like to have enough tricks in the toolkit that I can summon the wind whenever I need it.

I'm at the Starbucks at Festival Hall right now, in pursuit of that selfsame wind. There's a fucking crazy old dude dressed like a Swiss mountain climber who keeps endlessly putting on and taking off the various tchatchkes (sp?) of climbing gear that he has arrayed around his vest and liederhosen (sp, again? why the fuck do I use words I don't know how to spell?). It's possible that when he finishes putting on his greatcoat, he's going to do a triple flip up to the third level by summoning the power of the Almighty. No wait - he opted for the stairs. No wait - now he's doing step aerobics. What the fuck am I doing here.

Reading: Buffy #10 is terrific. Just terrific. Not what I expected at all but this one does, actually, feel more like an episode of the show than any of the prior issues. There's the sack-of-hammers approach to storytelling that Joss used in issue #5, i.e. I Have An Idea And Here Is My Idea Fully Expressed (With Pictures!), and then there's this - using casual plotting and almost a seeming indifference to quietly explain the whole fucking thing. And by "the whole fucking thing," I not only mean this eensy weensy seasonal arc that's taking shape, but also really the meaning of Buffy, and the meaning of life. Plus, so many threads tied up. Thank you for that.

I'm making solid progress on Snapdragon, still not quite at the "this thing earns its own argument" stage, but closer to the "I can believe that someone, someday, might want to read this" stage. And there's a few other things queued up behind it, so at least I've got something to think about.

"Any unstable reality field is potentially dangerous, even cataclysmic." - Willow

Posted by tederick at 12:57 PM in comix & joss & the process
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Ugh. Real life sucks sometimes.

I have a tiny but deep cut on my left middle finger. The result is that there is a really gorgeous blood stain on the "e" key of my nice white keyboard at home, along with a supporting horizontal smear along the top of my screen where I use my middle finger to push it open in the morning. OK, to everyone else, this seems gross. To me, it's proof I exist.

Matty Price and I recorded the year-in-review Mamo last night; you may enlisten by enclicking this enlink. Large tracts of it will come as very little surprise to anyone who is, oh I don't know, reading this blog right now, but I do find it entertaining that my partner and I have ended up on opposite sides of this divisive format war dealie. In fact, I'm feeling very much like a man on my own in the cold lately: Chris went HD-DVD, and so did my uncle. I am the Sole Blu.

I am going to have to start re-cracking Snapdragon tonight or tomorrow. I've let it - and everything - slide for a really, really long time. (Have you seen Extreme Steve lately? No, neither have I.) I also have a new funnybook in mind that I might try to draft out for Sasha to draw, and at least one script idea that it is officially well past time I got started on. Let's make it a productive January, rather than an oh-god-I-wish-I-was-dead January like usual.

On a more meat-and-potatoes-and-bedroom-windows level, there is a very wide gulf between the things I am doing, and the things I would like to be doing. But I can see the other side from here.

Posted by tederick at 1:00 PM in blood & podcastery & shinybludisks & the process
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So I'm pretty much done with Terra. Issue 6 is in the can. I have some revisions to make tomorrow and then Chad and I need to take a step back and look at the whole picture and figure out next steps. But yeah, it's sort of amazing how well this thing turned out, IMHO. It just gained a level of narrative momentum in issues 5 and 6 that was quite satisfying - like, we'd started this thing rolling and put enough things in it that when we got to the climax, it couldn't help but be anything other than the awesomeness that it is. So yay for our team.

It all started here.

Meanwhile, the creative individuals responsible for the Ghostbusters franchise have rejected my proposal for Ghostbusters 3 (what's wrong, Hollywood? Scared of a little $200M script by a completely inexperienced unknown? You lack balls, sir) and have decided instead to continue the narrative in video game form. Zah! But at least they had the sense to get William Atherton back. I wonder if they'll have cottoned to the fact that they can't cast the EPA guy as the bad guy any more?

Been a big, interesting week so far. Haven't been sleeping much, trying to manage my anxieties, but things are trending in a generally good direction. And I'm crushing, Internet, more than I ought. But it's gonna be a big job to get to next Thursday's One Minute Film Festival, and after that, a flat-out fucking sprint to the tenth of December. So we'll see. Stand clear: I cannot control these boots.

Posted by tederick at 10:34 AM in the process
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Last coupla days, I've foregone my usual subway reading in favour of listening to really, really, REALLY loud music on the way in to work. Very unusual for me, but something about these November mornings seem to require some serious brainfill. I'm getting up earlier and earlier - I barely slept at all last night, actually - and having now received Chad's final pages, I am trying to get Terra done by the end of the week. And how awesome would that be.

Meanwhile, the hottest woman ever named Jennifer Morrison is in the new Trek movie. With a jaw line like that I'm assuming they'll waste her playing a Romulan or something. Oh why couldn't she play a nubile hottie getting her Jamaharon on with a young Jim Kirk?

And the nerd beat drops now.

Saying of which, Strikewatch: whatever! Here's an interesting point (don't continue if you don't want some basic plot spoilers for the Trek flick): Harlan Ellison is all pissed off because he's not being paid for his ideas from "City on the Edge of Forever." Now, Harlan Ellison is almost always pissed off, and it's usually about "City on the Edge of Forever." But here, the basic claim he's making is that while Paramount owns all of the Star Trek "proper" elements that appear in that episode, the stuff that Ellison specifically invented (Edith Keeler, the Guardian of Forever, etc.) are still owned by him. And if they are indeed being used in the new Trek movie, he's owed.

I guess I'm with Ellison in spirit, although I doubt the legalities support his claim. I mean, if they're using the Kobayashi Maru scenario in the flick (as they seem to be), does that mean they owe Harve Bennett money? And owe Bennett for every single KM reference in all of the movies after Khan, and all of the TV episodes that refer to it as well? Fuck, there's even a novel (a really, really good one by Trek novel standards) about the Kobayashi Maru and how Kirk passed it. I seriously doubt there's any street cred for the idea that individual creative parties can retain some kind of authorial control over elements that they fed into the great Trek furnace over the course of the past 40 years. Still, this strikerly season has me thinking about the interests of the poor bastard writers more than usual, not least because I'm doing so much writing myself. I long ago gave up the idea that I could ever "own" an idea or even necessarily an artwork (other than the Bunny girl hanging on my bedroom wall), but it would be nice to think that fifty years from now I'm not going to be sitting in some old age home dying of lung cancer while Marvel gets fat off Terra gift mugs.

But as BKV pointed out last week, at least screenwriters are unionized; comic writers have no protection at all. As much as I have queasy feelings about certain unions ([cough] TTC! [cough]), I still think no protection at all is a pretty shitty state to be in, especially when your creativity is personally feeding the profits of a megacorporation as big and fancy as Marvel/DC/DarkHorse/whatever.

You know, a few years ago, an ad agency in Los Angeles wanted to get hold of the One Minute Film Festival movies. We didn't do it, but I've often wondered what woulda happened if we went down that road. But I guess all the naive enthusiasm I might have mustered at the time was essentially useless against the inevitable reality: they would have ripped us off, or ignored us completely, and not the third thing. I've Youtubed a movie and put pictures of myself on Facebook which, by a careful reading of the release on the site, means I pretty much no longer own them. And there's ten years of backblog images and Jasper screencaps from this site being used as signatures on forums and message boards all over the world wide Interwebs. We've come a long way from the days when I could bully that Kevin kid into stopping stealing my blog work for his Geocities site just by threatening to rat him out to Yahoo. I have an increasing feeling that we just might be coming up on a period where "ownership" will pretty much cease to exist. We're a pirate armada now, for better or (more likely) worse. The world is a mashup video, but the rum casks are empty.

Posted by tederick at 9:33 AM in movies & pirates & the process & tv
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The best thing that can happen at a playoff happened today:! The other team didn't show up!! Because they feared us. Default win, wooooooooooo! So Yellow Wall is now aiming firmly for the middle of the standings in next week's final final. And I gotta say... spending a couple of hours this afternoon shooting at Chris and Stacey didn't suck either. (Hmmm... actual soccer practice. Novel idea.) I've said it before and I'll say it again: no matter what else, Wall wins on spirit every single time. Rah.

D-Coc and I went to see No Country For Old Men last night and I found that it was not to my liking. The evening also served as an impromptu celebration of the conclusion of our Secrets movie project, which was hatched on an evening very much like this one back in April. Hopefully y'all are still planning to come to the One Minute Film Festival in 9 days and will understand better what I am talking about at that time.

Teen Girl Squad's party was in full swing when I got home; I woke up again at around 3:00 because my toys were vibrating in time with the sub woofer downstairs. A brief but restive sleep later I bounded out of bed at 7:45 and went for my regular coffee, and ended up making a whole morning thing of it: coffee, crepes, reading Iron Fist and working on Snapdragon. It was sorta pretty much awesome. Oh, I love my little comic book that's not yet a comic book. I really think it's getting somewhere; it has a shape and a flavour and a meaning and at least one line that I think is genuinely, spectacularly funny. I'm doing some last revisions before I start passing it around to readers. And then... yikes! An artist? Could there be art? There could be art. Gotta get a few more pages done on Terra and then I think we could begin to call 2007 The Year I Started Writing Comics.

Posted by tederick at 4:15 PM in 1MFVF & movies & sockey & the process
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I gotta say, as much as Timothy's scones are usually the cat's asshole, the one I had this morning was pretty decent.

So today I got up at QUARTER TO SIX, Interwebs. I blame everyone and everything, and mostly myself because I went out with Sandy last night and had martinis and salty food so the headache that roused me and wouldn't let me go back to sleep was probably my fault. And George Bush's. Now, the serious, serious upside to this was that I pretty much kicked the shit out of the fifth-and-final-for-now issue of Snapdragon. I revised the first twelve pages extensively, and wrote the remaining ten. That bitch is done. That said, I have some serious revision to do across the board. But once again I am just glee-filled at the degree to which I feel like I found something worthwhile here and managed to deliver it (to myself). It has a whole shape, and brings the story right back to the main character, from whence it strayed in issues 3 and 4. Oh comics. I could be happy as a clam doing this for ever.

Strikewatch: day 3!: Joss s'more. Boy it would be nice if Joss Whedon had a blog instead of all this shameless squatting. And while on the subject of strikewatch, E.R. might get extended cuz of this thing - which, to me, is like... they've done how many euthanasia shows on that series, and they can't see that IT'S TIME TO DIE??? I cannot believe anyone still watches E.R., and I stuck with that show longer than pretty much anyone. In its early years, in fact, it was pretty much my Very Favourite Thing. I've been watching some of the DVDs recently (seasons 4 and 5), and loving the shit out of it, so I tuned back in a couple of weeks ago and found it rather like going back to my old high school: same basic wall structure but fuck me if every single other thing has completely changed and left me behind. No series should go on to the point where there is no longer a single recognizeable element of what it started with, other than that it's still set at County General (a completely redesigned, rebuilt, no-more-opening-credits-at-all County General!). It's so inane.

In closing I'll just throw out a OMGWTFBBQ: BRFC!, and then guide your attention to the latest Teen Girl Squad! episode, which is so much more enjoyable than the ones that live downstairs from me.

"The Po Po! I can't do another nickel."

Posted by tederick at 9:52 AM in blogTO & foodin' & joss & the process & tv
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I bought a pair of boots offa the Cannonball today; boots for the liberal kicking of shit. I'm quite happy with them; they may someday soothe the still-gaping wound in my heart where my Uncle Paul's 40-year-old work boots once lived. Oh how I miss those boots.

Strikewatch: day 2! Joss does his rah rah thing. Teensy tinsy Dollhouse mention but otherwise mostly just rah rah and cough cough.

Whoa, the lights just flickered twice. This post might not make it.

I am pleased as a bitch with my six pages of Terra, newly minted this morning. They aren't as good as Chad's from last week but they make me feel like A Writer. Which, as you can tell by its capitalization, means a lot to me. Going to dive back into Snapdragon and try to finish issue 5 - that one is definitely not going as well as the space cowgirls one. Frick, I am behind on everything. Good thing nobody pays me for any of this.

Snow is coming. Snowboarding is coming after?

Posted by tederick at 10:57 AM in joss & the process
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In support of my peeps in the WGA, I am declaring a wildcat strike here on Tederick.com! No new blog posts until this writer's strike is concluded!!

Nah of course not.

Here's BKV though; I adore him.

And over here, Morena Baccarin may or may not have spilled the big wooooooooo SECRET! of Book's past. Are you sad now that you know? I am. I was pretty good with "No I don't."

Hey guess what? Heath Ledger is gonna kick Batman's ass. In spite of the naysayers I remain pretty happy with the casting choice, and when I hear things like this:

It is a physically and mentally draining role — his Joker is a “psychopathic, mass-murdering, schizophrenic clown with zero empathy” he said cheerfully — and, as often happens when he throws himself into a part, he is not sleeping much. “Last week I probably slept an average of two hours a night,” he said. “I couldn’t stop thinking. My body was exhausted, and my mind was still going.”

I get even happier. I am all behind dudes who look like they can really throw a punch these days, and Heath Ledger can really throw a punch. Can't wait to see that IMAX preview with I Am Legend. Yeah it's a spoiler. So what? I gots ta get my Joker on.

Posted by tederick at 11:22 AM in batman! & movies & the process
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I took a blow to the head yesterday, Internet! I was going in for a header during soccer and the guy coming at me went in for the very same header. Our heads collided, pulverizing my delicate brainmeats. I tell ya, that is some full digital Dolby surround sound awesomeness when that happens. Anyways now I have a bump on the noggin (diagnosis? bad babysitting!) and a general unwillingness to move quickly or think deep thoughts.

Trying to get my leg over the list of movies I haven't seen yet, Matty Price and me went to see American Gangster last night; I was disappointed. It's not that it's a bad film, per se, just relatively unaffecting. The key to making the Goodfellas structure work (and it's not just for gangster movies; it usually also applies to rock biopics, or any other story where someone starts from humble beginnings, the going gets good, and then it all goes to hell) is that the on-the-way-up part of the story needs to be really fuckin' fiun. That way, you get to enjoy the characters and give a fuck that they'll be driving around with a bunch of cocaine in the car while being tailed by an FBI helicopter in the third act. Here, I weren't feelin' it. But between this, Grindhouse, and No Country, there's no denying that Josh Brolin's having a hell of a year.

I am using my bonus hour today to do some patchwork on Terra - haven't been into that script in a dog's age, so not exactly sure what I'll find when I try to set my mind into it, but I owe what I owe and there's nothing like a solid challenge on a cold Monday morning.

Oh and by the way: if I wasn't crushing like a fool before, I sure as fuck am now. Oh life!

Posted by tederick at 6:49 AM in movies & sockey & the process
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Megatron destroyed Sao Feng, internet. I think as humans we tend to forget the sheer destructive power that robot kicks will do to a person's jaw. Yeah Sao Feng ain't getting up any time soon. I made hilarious videotape of the whole thing! Maybe if I'm feeling particularly 2.0 later I'll put it up on the Toub.

As we were at the Starbucks until closing last night recording the Mamo, and I'm at the Starbucks just after opening working on the Snapdragon, I can verify for my readers that goblin hoedowns do not take place at Starbuckses after hours. Or if they do, the goblins are unusually good at clearing away the evidence. Because this place looks exactly the same.

I added a fifth issue to Snapdragon; the plot is concluded at the end of issue 4 but the primary characters get sort of underserved by that issue so I wanted to tack one more on. The problem with 5 is, no plot at all. Soooooooo.... that's challenging. It's all just warm-up for the next thing anyway, which will be comprised of one part writing a new feature, and two parts shooting a new short. I am heartened by the degree that Diablo Cody is all over the movie news lately, hustlin' and flowin' with new movies and new TV shows for Steven Spielberg. Former stripper can dealmake! Good for her. Of course, if my name was Diablo, I wouldn't face the career challenges I currently face. But I'm not as burned up about that as I usedtacould.

It's pouring. I'm sailing on a new open Wi-Fi port because all of the old ones surrounding this Starbucks got unceremoniously shut down a couple of weeks ago. WERE GOBLINS INVOLVED? Time will tell.

Posted by tederick at 7:15 AM in megatron & movies & podcastery & the process & toys!
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That's the only possible explanation for that noise.

I will start writing momentarily - don't rush me! I am picking my way through issue 4 of Snapdragon - turns out, not having a plan occasionally sucks. I'm getting there, but slowly.

I'd like to take this opportunity to stress the importance of diet and exercise. I rode my bike down to the blogTO meeting last night and yeah, it was hard and cold and my muscles are already turning into old leather, but I felt about 110% better after I was done. Winter is scary to me. Don't want another one like last time, want to keep the activity level up, and am fundamentally unwilling to join a gym. It's poxy, and I don't like it. Already I'm pissed at about six people who don't deserve it (including one who really, really doesn't deserve it), and I storm around from place to place like I'm going to burst in with a rapier and go to town on the joint. Clearly something vexes me.

(There, I used poxy and vex in the same paragraph. I am clearly awesome.)

Here, this will amuse you:

It's impossible not to feel a little better after a spate of Vadermonica.

Posted by tederick at 7:14 AM in 3QF & galaxy far & the process & youtubery
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It seems to me that Lando Calrissian was in a hell of a position. Professional gambler, and not a small one - he lost the Falcon playing cards against Han Solo, a whole frickin' space ship. Have you ever lost a space ship? No. Calrissian's got the desperation in him, he knows that when he gambles he can go too far and lose big, but it's the only thing he knows how to do. He's barely staying ahead of the curve at Bespin, and then the Dark Lord shows up on Cloud City and offers Lando a deal - Lando figures he can run with it, bide his time till the river turns over and make what he can make based on what's on the table. But Vader switches the game on him, the river never comes, and suddenly Lando's caught out dealing from the bottom of the deck by not just a Sith Lord, but by one of the best gamblers Lando ever knew: Hanwise J. Solo. Sure, it's a bad situation that he got himself into by thinking he could play one step ahead of a dirty game, but still, one sympathizes. How could he have known that for a few brief, terrifying hours, is little Tibana gas mine would be the hub around which the entire Galactic Civil War revolved?

It's election day in Ontario; I admit I haven't been as diligent as I might have been in selecting my candidate. I tend to vacillate between the Liberals and the NDP at both the Federal and Provincial levels of government, but I live in a strongly NDP riding right now. While I can support the NDP candidate at the Federal level (hey, it's Jack Layton, the man entrances me), something about the Provincial candidate makes me queasy. So I'm really not sure which way I'll go tonight, though I'll give it more thought today. We have a referendum this time around, too, but I don't think it's a very exciiting one. Still, decisions must be made.

Having mired up halfway through issue 4 of Snapdragon, I am reviewing and revising the earlier issues. This morning I finished issue 2 (again). I've also come up with at least two (maybe three?) new characters that I'd like to drop in there, but there isn't a lot of space. Page count is my nemesis. Advantage of writing comics: the dialogue can be a bit more "on the nose," which suits me; disadvantage: way, way shorter lines, which runs counter to my obvious tendencies towards verbotic overrun. It's a juggling act. And I'm trying not to get too ratholed on this single item that will, quite obviously, never see publication, but it's a logical puzzle to try to solve this thing, and I am engrossed.

Posted by tederick at 8:34 AM in galaxy far & goddamn politics & the process
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Well anyways, I'm at the Starbucks at Spadina and Richmond right now with my bunny girl art freshly purchased, in an ill-fitting bag that will not protect it from the torrential downpour that just opened up out of the heavens mere moments ago. I guess I'll be here a while. The owner of "linksys-g" is going to have to bum me some bandwidth so that I can amuse myself.

There's a girl in my yoga class who never smiles. I call her So Serious. She's very pretty, so naturally I spend more time than I should trying to do something that will make her crack a grin, but without ever taking it as far as actually going up to her and telling knock-knock jokes. This usually involves kibitzing with Jo-Lowe, or doing hilarious falls when I lose my balance during Tree Pose. Or making asides about Spider-Man that the whole class can hear. But it occurred to me on the way home today that if I was So Serious, I'd fucking hate people like me. She's probably pensive and stoic for a reason! Like her entire family was killed by the Viet Cong! So I should really stop invading her emotional space with my "every pretty girl should smile" manifesto.

Saying of which, there's a girl who looks a lot like So Serious, sitting next to me right now, on an identical laptop drinking an identical coffee waiting for the identical storm to identically subside. She's not carrying a framed line drawing, though. Some things are for me and me alone.

Every time the sugar gets clogged at the Starbucks, I become hyper-paranoid that my efforts to jar it free are going to result in another sugar shatter incident like the one that happened to Matty Price. But I always forget what incredibly powerful hands he has. Maybe I'm just trying to forget.

There are other people sheltering here with us; some have abandoned all pretense of coffee-buying and are just waiting by the door for a gap in the storm. When such a gap appears I shall go to Burrito Boyz, but the time has yet to come. Wait... a couple in their thirties just went for it. They are taking their chances, Internet. I do not believe this momentary cessation of downpour shall last. Look how eerily quiet it is. Somehow the animals are always the first to know.

I'll be sonofabitched: last year's best film is actually in limited release.

I really came here to do some work. I figured I'd resuscitate Snapdragon, given that I haven't worked on it on Monday, and maybe crank out an Extreme Steve or two. I'm just not feeling it right now though. The problem with flying Snapdragon without a net is that there is an actual plot MacGuffin carrying through the first four (soon to be five) issues, and being as that I didn't plan it out, it's got a few contradictions in it. So I need to go back and clear all that out, and have many multi-coloured cyber-stickies on the subject, but actually doing the work feels preventative right now. Fuck it: I'll suck it up and do the first issue at least. I'm mired in issue 4 without a clear way forward on this plotline, and I want done with this so I can start Pandaemonium soon.

Rain's clearing. Soon I'll be on my way.

Posted by tederick at 2:59 PM in miscellaneous crap & movies & the process
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If I want to stop dating, I need to stop flirting.

[key learning!]

A good weekend but a hard one. My whole body hurts, from activities I would not have immediately described as physically strenuous. I mean I guess going to an all-night arts festival and walking from Queen and Dufferin to Yonge and Bay, and back again, is strenuous, but you hardly notice it at the time. Hey, a one-armed guy swallowed fire for me, and I met someone whose name is actually Fedora. I'm not complaining. Unless you ask Stacey, in which case I am apparently complaining a lot.

My handful of "hosting" deals for the One Minute Film Fest screening at the Rhino went pretty well; I also got an on-the-street review of Leap as it was happening because, of course, the throng that had gathered on the sidewalk had no idea I was sitting right there when they started picking apart my film. I also did "Don't I know you from somewhere?" on an actual person. See above re: no flirting.

On the whole my evening was done in by approaching it the wrong way: too much destination-based planning, not enough floating around seeing shit. You can't travel during this thing, and I spent most of my night trying to travel. Next year it's not about start points, end points, and meeting points; it's about a place to start, and a time to get home. Artistic!

I've got a solid week of team/departmental meetings ahead and I think this is my last kick at the can with the writing for a little while... I'm about to start issue 4 of Snapdragon. Jesus, the sun isn't even up yet... but by way of another key learning, there's something to be said for having your day job be the second thing you do in a given day. Changes the priority / mental state somewhat. All those people who get up and go jogging, Nate-style, probably already know this. I am in the slow class.

Posted by tederick at 6:56 AM in 1MFVF & jedi antics & the process
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This morning I wrote pretty much the entire third issue of Snapdragon... I just couldn't stop. Again, being as that I'm doing this with no plan whatsoever I thought that was pretty impressive. Plus, being a comics reader myself, I suspect this is the issue where - if this thing ever sees print - the readers will go, "oh, NOW he knows what do with it." This is the one where the possibilities of the concept overtook the requirements of the genre. I file it under "yay me."

Sorry for all the masturbation on the blog lately, but I am feeling uncommonly calm, clear, and focused right now, and with that being the general state to which I am always striving, I'm just sort of trying to make sure I don't miss it while it's here.

Key among my current joys is the degree to which I am enjoying Dividadero. Holy sweet crap, am I enjoying Divisadero. Ondaatje's writing remains near-narcotic in its effect on me... to say nothing of its equally respectable near-erotic effects. It's been a long time since I've read a (non-Harry Potter) book that literally fell under "can't put it down." I've got a stack of Iron Fist comics that ain't gettin' any smaller cuz I'd rather be in novel-land right now. Been a while for that one, too.

I am on a strict diet of Evanescence and Coldplay right now; not sure why. It's like a 2002 musical wonderland in my head, following the 1987 musical wonderland that was my Appetite for Destruction haze last month.

In the next week I've got Nuit Blanche, a departmental offsite, a team day, three working dinners, a soccer game, yoga, and a Mamo. I've also got minor VCR 9 prepping to do: our first shoot date is booked for the 8th of October, at the vacant lot near my office. Sending out the sides last night I finally began to understand what Adam meant when he said there was no way I was ever going to make this. It seems un-possible, I guess. But it all makes sense in my head...

At work today someone told me that I'm a catch, and I actually took it as a compliment instead of as an incendiary like I usually do. Times have sure as fuck changed.

Posted by tederick at 9:26 AM in books & tederick films & the process
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I finished the second issue of Snapdragon this morning and went straight into the third. I am fucking loving this. I should note, for purposes of self-aggrandization if nothing else, that I really started this with no overall plan. I found the story, though, and I'm really liking it. Plus, like that first bike ride of the season, it just feels good to be stretching my legs again - which works well with the fact that I am back into my yoga practice twice weekly, after a six week hiatus. I also had what had to have been my final warm summer night bike ride tonight, because Toronto was 32 goddamned degrees today. It won't last. It won't even last 12 more hours. We're going into the hole.

This would be an outstanding opportunity to re-pimp this Saturday's Nuit Blanche screening of the One Minute Film & Video Festival, years 1-4. It's at the Rhino in Parkdale and I believe the ball drops (for the first time of many) at 7:03. I will be popping up occasionally, whack-a-mole style, to introduce, blather, and generally make merry. I have yet to write anything for it. So it might be a "2005 show" as opposed to a "2006 show."

Right now I'm hiding from that selfsame film festival at the Starbucks at Yonge and Bloor; my dinner plans for tonight promptly evaporated but my living room is under siege by festival submissions, and I didn't particularly feature sitting round doing nothing. So instead, I am sitting round doing nothing somewhere else. It's a fine distinction but I like to think I'm the master. And two days in, I must say, I feel positively unchained. Everything's in its proper box right now: life is making sense, for the first time in longer than I'd care to remember. So that's a good. It's an interesting thing, love without expectation.

Posted by tederick at 8:59 PM in 1MFVF & the process
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I started a new scheme this morning - a new, crazy scheme! Owing to the fact that I am always too tired to write when I get home from work, I am now waking up an hour earlier, and writing before I go. Holy madness and balls-ass shit that's clever. And the really good news (in terms of behaviour reinforcement) is that the first time out, I smacked it out of the park - six pages on Snapdragon including the key beat for the second issue and one sweet motherfucking My So-Called Life hommage on page 17. I'm using Snapdragon (comic) as the warm-up lap before starting Pandaemonium (screenplay). The latter has been knocking against the inside of my head rather fiercely since I thought it up a month ago, and yeah, it's time to put the rubber on the road.

And incidentally - Bendis is right, Final Draft is awesome for writing comics. One of my major challenges writing Terra and now Snapdragon was the sheer quantity of time it took to format everything as I went along in Word, which is not the friendliest program ever; it was seriously cutting into my mental flow and dropping my page count to a snail's pace. Well not so much any more, my people; I'm flying through the setups now. Oh Bendis. You have earned your egg.

Once again for soccer yesterday, nobody showed up, but after we had defaulted to the other team we had a rather rousing just-for-fun game, and fun it was. The Red Queen was in play, Stacey was teasing me relentlessly for everything, and Crazylegs... well, that man's got some crazy legs. I love my team. I know I say that a lot, but damn, it is just so freaking rare in my life to see a group of people who are just out to have fun and be decent.

And then Jessi cooked us a mighty dinner - she's handy to have around, that one - and we watched some of my flicks, including Bone Daddy 2 which I haven't watched in forever. Oh, and watching a total non-Star Wars person enjoy Far, Far Away as much as she did? Warms my wookiee-lovin' heart.

It is definitely time to move the catalogue forward, though. Looking at my tapes last night, I was struck by how old it all felt. I've finally got a shoot date on VCR 9, but I'm looking forward to moving stuff that is really not of the order of the rest. I've got a hunger on in a big way right now.

Posted by tederick at 10:59 AM in sockey & tederick films & the process
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Strangest thing, I actually got "the Labour Day feeling" today. The "oh my god oh my god another school year starts tomorrow" thing. Which is so entirely not the case - just an easy two-day work week and then I'm into the big show for ten days, and after that the future is far cloudier but I'm pretty frickin' sure it doesn't involve passing notes back and forth under desks, and broken-backed copies of The Stone Angel. At least, I hope not. Still, it feels like a beginning. My plans with Bex for the evening got scuttled, so I watched Bande a parte instead… and oh my god. I am in fucking love with this movie. The scene where they start dancing in the cafe and then the music just stops dead while the narrator talks about what each character is thinking... the run through the Louvre… this film makes me wish I was twenty years old and living in Paris, shooting black and white 16mm film out the back of a moving car. I got tweety-bird drunk, flushed in the cheeks delirious, just on watching this fucking movie. Halfway through the flick Jessi came up, borrowed some honey, and read me some poetry. What life is this??

I came up with a new script idea this weekend. A really, really, really fucking solid idea. It needs just a bit of percolation for the details, the structure's all there already, and then I think I'm just going to draft it out as hard and as fast as I can, see if I can turn around a draft in under a month. I need to go back on the 4 pages a day thing; I'm backlogging pages on Terra and Snapdragon. It's time to clear the gutters. Enough sewage.

Posted by tederick at 11:14 PM in movies & poetical & the process
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Brian Lynch was nice enough to post a page from his Spike: Shadow Puppets #3 script on his blog, to show us once again that every single writer formats his comic script completely differently from every single other writer. Chad and I, for example, get very nitty of the gritty with our panel descriptions and quasi-layout discussions. But I cannot post one of those, for that would be a spoiler and ruinous of Chad and I's fun. So instead, although they aren't quite as visually dextrous as the Terra scripts, I'll post a script for Extreme Steve.

Yes, a script for Extreme Steve! The reason there is no Extreme Steve today (or two weeks ago today for that matter) is that I have been doing more work in the planning n' prepping department than the actual drawing of episodes. Which will make more sense in about eight months when all of this planning comes to fruition and I publish my schematic (called the Extreme Scheme) to show you just how spectacularly over-prepared I was for the coming episodes of Extreme Steve.

Obviously, I don't pre-write every episode; I usually just draw 'em. But sometimes I'm away from Photoshop or otherwise inclined to actually script something out for various reasons, as in the case of our example. Here's the episode we'll be discussing today:

And here's the script:

Panel 1
Extreme credits.

Panel 2
Batman and the Rebel Fleet Trooper are sitting on a rooftop against a moonlit sky. Mars is visible in frame.

Batman: It isn’t that that I don’t love crimefighting, I do, I just don’t see the percentage any more.

RFT: What percentage? You think my pappy wanted to see me slinging funnybooks for a living? I was gonna be a dentist, man.

Panel 3
The RFT is standing up.

Batman: You know what the real problem is… actually you’ll like this, it has to do with your friend Extreme Steve…

RFT: Tell me later, I gotta catch the X-Files on the 11:00 repeat.

Panel 4
Batman is left on his own.

Panel 5
The Scary Character From [Spoiler Deleted] is now standing over Batman’s left shoulder.

Batman: What, did you forget the lube?

Panel 6
Scary Character has lobbed off Batman’s head. A geyser of blood shoots upwards.

Panel 7
Extreme Steve and Extreme Willis are in conversation. Extreme Steve’s eyes are wide with surprise.

Willis: …and I don’t feature that as part of the traditional banana split.

Willis: Whoa, you look like you’ve seen a ghost.

Panel 8
Steve is looking at his own hands.

Extreme Steve: Not a ghost…

Posted by tederick at 1:31 PM in comix & extreme steve & the process
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Yesterday Chad and I blocked out the last two issues of Terra; I'm going to try to complete my pages this week and then it's done, mercifully done, by way of never really ever being done, but done nonetheless. Sweet doneness. The all-enveloping warmth of doneitude. Bon chance.

Here's a Mamo!

I am now officially counting the days until my vacation. Today, for example, there are 24. (Like the show!) I woke up this morning and it was unusually cold in my room and my brain had the momentary luxury of tricking itself into believing it was September. Then I bitchslapped that brain back into August! Oh yeah. Total control.

Now maybe you can help me with a problem I'm having, Internet. Over the past few weeks, there have been a surprising number of comments posted to very, very old posts. I know what you're thinking: spam, right? Well by my definition, spam has to have some kind of point, like an outbound link drawing one to a spam web site, or whatever. It can't just be shittily-written non-sequiters with questionable connections to the content at hand. I'll give you an example: this guy. Or a much-less-safe-for-work example here. Are these commenters human? Or merely stupider robots than usual? What happens to A.I. when it forgets that it's A.I. and starts to believe it has an opinion on vaginas and eggs benedict? Is this the end of the world? ...or the beginning? YOU DECIDE.

It is fucking Monday. It is fucking Monday, Internet. I'll be back later to talk about Pirates of the Caribbean.

Posted by tederick at 9:22 AM in podcastery & tederickdotcomdotcom & the process
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Three down (?). One to go: we're at the edge of the forest.

There are few things in nature more pitiful than a dead snake. Snakes - while alive - remain my last lingering natural fear, but once dead, a snake so completely loses its essential snakeness that it becomes less than even a mean parody of its original self. A living snake is alarming because of its very nature: the way it moves, the way its body reacts to its muscles and skeleton and scales, the way its horrible snake brain processes and interprets the fundamental drives that make it, in fact, a snake. All of these things, however, evaporate immediately upon death. No other creature so completely abandons the things that make it itself when it dies as does the snake. A dead rabbit is still demonstrably a rabbit; a dead snake is like a discarded inner tube or a used condom, a depressed leaving on the road to God's toilet. Pity the dead snake: in passing, it suffers the ignominy of an utter refutation of self. And there ain't no snake heaven.

Over the weekend, I made a fairly significant change to Snapdragon, and then finished the first issue and sketched out the rest of the opening arc. I love it. I'm going to try to at least lay feet in cement on the second issue today; it's still a big concept and quite possibly too rude for the world, but it's fun to be writing again, and writing something where I can stitch in so many bizarre and useless details from my own bizarre and useless life. Once the first 4 issues are done, I'll share and discuss.

I finished Deathly Hallows for the second time this morning, and now get to put Potter back on the shelf for the next long while. I've been nonstop Potter since what, the beginning of June? I do dearly love that book, though. Once again I really respond to the multifold stories that come exploding out of it in the end - not just the conclusion of Harry's tale, but the scant, imaginative details that fill my brain with thoughts of Dumbledore's youth and Snape's tortured life and what it's like to be Aberforth and what Neville and the DA got up to in their seventh year and what Rose, Hugo, Lily, Albus and James might get up to at Hogwarts nineteen years from now. That's something I got a lot of in Pirates 3, too, ironically; I liked the fact that when the story was done, it nonetheless suggested a half dozen other stories that might yet happen but are left entirely under my own governance to work out for myself in a summer daydream. That's good writing. It's no longer a question of density: just one of setting a few gears in motion, and hoping your readers are creative enough to go to their own places with them. Trusting our ability to keep the worlds alive ourselves, rather than having to be told.

Posted by tederick at 11:04 AM in h-pot & the process
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The braintrusts at Rogers shut down Tederick Central Command again this morning, calling into question for the umpteenth time my decision to bundle anything, ever. Say you have a bundle of wood. (A "faggot" if you will.) And you set fire to a piece of wood in that bundle. You know what happens to the rest of that wood? It burns. Boy does it burn.

Speaking of fire, you can't deny the simple appeal of this:

DRAGON WARS

(and trailer)

Crapulent awesomeness. But I think it's going to be down to me to make a movie that unites all of the Cardinal points of my particular compass: Dragons vs. Pirates vs. Schoolgirls With Lightsabres. Until then, Dragon Wars will do nicely.

Hey speaking of good ideas for a movie: dead baby in wall. Dead baby from 1925! Tell me this doesn't read like the first scene of a kickass period ghost story.

Fuck, I don't write enough.

Posted by tederick at 9:36 AM in movies & the process
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