Hell's Half Acre

creepfest3000

I've refined my creepfest story to make it about a loner programmer who builds a social networking application in order to make friends. He makes up imaginary friends/profiles on the network which become interspersed with a handful of real profiles.  He meets up with some of the real peeps in the realz, but when they begin to understand and learn about this weird world he has created and why, they start to shun and ignore him. He responds by stalking and then killing off people in the social network. . .at first just the imaginary friends but then he upgrades to the real peeps. The entire time, his psychosis is growing so he has a hard time discerning the difference between the real peeps and his imaginary friends. He can't see why "deleting" someone would be an issue.

It'll be from the POV of the insane/loner/programmer mostly, and focus on the hard time he is having making that distinction between the ether and the realz.

after writing this, I suppose this character is a cross between Carrie and Patrick Bateman from  American Psycho but I wasn't thinking of those films when I was coming up with the idea.

That's the part that sucks when someone says "Be original."  Fuck off. We've already seen everything. Anything going forward is just a pastiche. I suppose, the character can be original if he is well drawn.  A screenplay could seem original if the writing is vigorous and engaging. But original concept. . . ? I'm freaking lost.  I think up something then immediately I'm like, "oh yeah, Carrie. American Psycho. Travis fucking Bickle. Isn't this about the American Dream gone sour? What is the overaching theme?"

And then instead of being able to write a simple story about an insane sad lonely person and how he copes with his lonliness and how he tries to get what he wants. . .the writing just stops. Brain cramps and mayhem ensue. 

hitting the wall

I've been playing catch up this week with all the homeworks I've missed.  It's now 9:46 pm and I am sitting in the basement of Bobst Library having squandered a beautiful evening in favor of grades. Last night too. The most gorgeous night of springtime gorgeousness and I was stooping over a laptop, doing regression analysis. bech.

Anywho. I have two left, last week's homework and this week's homework. I might just do last weeks and turn in this week's late since I'm stumped.

After we do the catching up in stats, it's time to finish the treatment, write the synopsis for the creepfest, and maybe even go back and do the dialogue thingy that I didn't do (still kind of stumped on that.)

How many more weeks did I say? five? four?

I got an email from a program at Oxford (they weren't soliciting. . .I signed up for the newsletter) and in a fit of craziness I started contemplating a post-grad cert. in software engineering. I don't even like programming. god get me out of this hellhole!

Commencement = May 7.

insomnia bites

Hello hello,

coming to live at 3:50 AM after faling asleep on the couch.  I've been trying to think of something scary, some kind of monster, that is so innocuous that we might encounter it in our everyday lives. I don't normally like to think about the creepy too much because I get the creeps, as one is apt to do.  But here I am, over thinking the creepies for the newest assignment in the screenwriting class.

We watched a movie in class on Monday which I mentioned in the previous post, called Funny Games.  It was an Austrian film, about a home invasion, where two sociopaths basically move from house to house around a vacation community, and kill the occcupants after putting them through extreme mental anguish. It's not graphic in the least but it was terrifying. It was claustrophobic and cringeworthy and I ended up biting the hell out of my fingernails while watching, even though we only viewed about a third of the movie. In the end, there is no ridiculous heroism, as there tends to be in American films. The family being terrorized just gets murdered, offscreen even, and the two sociopaths just move on to the next house. The two guys are normal looking in the creepyest way ever. They are wearing white polo shirts and khaki shorts and look like they just came from the tennis club.  They first cut off the family's communication link to the outside world, then eliminate the dog, then excute the child, then the father and finally at the end, drown the mother.

Nice, huh?

So then I was thinking, where could someone invade your life where you felt like you were safe, beside your home? Well one place where we mistakenly feel safe, especially bloggers, is the internet.  Social networking sites have made so many people feel comfortable that they put up all of the details of their life and become easily exploitable.  Spammers are able to invade your email, your phones, your instant messengers, your blog comments.

So I was thinking how creepy would it be if someone told you you were going to die. And they had told friends of yours that they were going to die, which they did, in the way that they were told, so that when you got the message, all you could do was wait. And wonder. And check your friggen closets. And be afraid of your food. And be afraid to stand too close to the subway tracks or leave your drink unattended at the bar or talk to strangers. What if the way you were told was through your friggen social networking site? What if there were some predator who created a fake site and then started killing the people who signed up. They could be terrorized for days or weeks before finally being taken out and you would watch and wait and wonder and since your whole fucking life depended on computers, at work, at school, and at home, you couldn't escape? And then if you turned around to have the whole thing investigated, you would find out that the murdered people you thought you knew weren't really real anyway so that everyone would think you were the victim of a hoax? Until of course, you were taken out.

It's just a thought. Might be a decent enough thought to turn in for an assignment.

Anyway, I'm tired of thinking about all that. It's really too creepy and now I am going to have to turn the tv back on so that I can fall asleep to the drone of the media. Here's something to wash the creeps away.

or this

and here's one last one

the amusement park of my mind

Welcome to the amusement park in my mind
mojo world
where there's water slides
with loop de loops
and barbecue sauce in the water slides
and drive in movie theaters
every night
playing two lane black top

I really can't remember the lyrics to that song but there are snippets running through my head today along with the theme song from Team America. The amusement park in my mind is a little less idyllic than Mojo World right now. It features the Scrambler, the Zipper, the Enterprise, and the Spider. All spinning twirling and disorienting.

The treatment gets a reprieve for a few days and the next thing I must create is a new Frankenstein ("make it original".)  I'm supposed to tap into the darkness of my subconscious and come up with some gothic horror that is contemporary.

Guess what? My imagination is shot. My idea of scary comes from inside. Insanity, mind control, losing your identity, losing control. My idea of terror involves fascism, oppression, kafka-esque bureacracy.  I don't know how to create a monster. How do you put all of that together to make something visual and film-able? All I can think of is The Scream. 

If I were smarter

I probably wouldn't have signed up for the screenwriting class if I were smarter.  I mean, I guess it's not that demanding. . .writing never is.  Writing well IS demanding and I hate it when I am stuck.  Typical of each semester that I have recorded in this blog, I am getting to the point of panic and pain, when I begin to lose track of my life and it all becomes a whirlwind of stress and worry.

The assignment I am working on tonight (due tomorrow of course) is to write a treatment for a screenplay. This assignment evolved out of another, earlier assignment in which we were instructed to watch a documentary on Shanghai in the 30s (a notorious sin city in the same vein as Berlin and Paris in the 20s & 30s.) We were to come up with an idea for a movie from the POV of someone who might have been in Shanghai at the time.

In true Krixfort fashion, I have spent the last few weeks overthinking this simple assignment.  I not only watched the documentary three times, I also checked out books to read while I was travelling. One was a historical account of the rise and fall of Shanghai. Very interesting historical account of the rise of the treaty port and its subsequent fall to the Japanese during WWII.  The other book, which brings me to the point of this entire post, was a series of articles written by American writer and adventurer Emily Hahn. This woman was so ahead of her time. Why I'd never heard of her before is a mystery.

My treatment is about a character who is loosely based on this incredible feminist and adventurer.  She has truly become my hero. She wrote for the New Yorker and only died a few years ago at the age of 92. This is AFTER she traveled across Africa on foot, smoked opium and wrote in Shanghai, lived in London, New York, New Mexico, got a degree in Engineering (to name a few of her exploits and accomplishments, not necessarily in the order they occurred.) Anyway, I'd recommend her book Times and Places as an easy read from someone who had insane tales to tell.

I'll let you know how the treatment goes tomorrow. 

hades and persephone

Okay I like the greek names better. I don't know why. I have realized that I must go back to Italy to see this Bernini sculpture-Pluto and Proserpina (1621-22)

How is that even marble?  I don't get it.  Amazing.

inventory

okay so when I was in my twenties, I decided that it would be impractical to keep more "things" than those that could fit in the back of my geo metro. Then I decided that the vagabond life of a twenty something was lame and that I needed to grow up and out of the realm of the futon and posters. It was time for a real live couch and pictures in frames.

Now, I am inventorying the rooms of crap I've accumulated in anticipation of moving abroad. Mind you, the moving is not a sure thing and even if it were, it probably won't take place until the fall. Therefore, the idea of chucking all my ikea shit into the street in favor of yoga maps is probably not prudent. Definitely not good for the weekend couch-a-thon/law-and-order fest.

Anyways, if anyone needs a beat up Juiceman Juicer, let me know.

El Jolly

This visit to the Jolly has been quite a bit different from the last. The last was full of confusion about streets and fear of the exchange rate. This time, I knew what to expect and how to get where I was going. Case in point, I have been navigating the city without a map, and only had to double back on the tube once.

There is something about this place that reminds me of home. I don't know if that home is Seattle home, or New York home or San Francisco home.  I had fajitas today at a mexican restaurant in Covent Garden near where I am staying. The restaurant had pictures of california. 

Last night I went to Putney where I visited a friend's brother, Geoff, who I've met before in L.A. He moved here in January and is giving the ex-pat thing a try, only he is lucky in that he was able to get a British passport since his mother was born in London. So he is a British national, able to get work and manuever around here without jumping through the hoops that I might have to in order to come here for awhile. That is mainly what we talked about. . .what you need to do to prepare to move abroad. In some ways he had it easier because of the passport situation but in some ways my situation is easier because of having a company that could put me to work right away (and pay me in pounds) and because there are many international banks that have offices in NYC (like HSBC) making it much easier to move your money accross the pond.

If I stayed at the same wage I have now, I could easily support myself in the Jolly. Geoff has already offered up the spare room as a crash pad if it works out.  I can't see any reasons why not except for the cost and time of going home to visit my mother and grandmother. That's a little perplexing but then again, I only see them once a year.

hmmm. May is when I can make these decisions. After graduation. 

the battle of San Romano in three countries

Would it be silly to travel to Paris tomorrow to see the last panel of the battle of San Romano? I've seen two already on this trip. It would almost be a shame to leave without seeing the third panel.

FYI-Boticelli's Birth of Venus was as beautiful as I had expected however La Primavera really knocked me on my ass.

The other surprise in the reals. . . Caravaggio. Fucking amazing. And by the way GG, I saw Judith. I was rounding the corner and there she was with her knife. Incredible.

Also, tips for tourists. Definitely reserve your Uffizi tickets online. no wait no fuss no mess. Bing bam boom, you're in the museo and you're running up the stairs to the sala de botticelli.

I was slightly dissappointed that Da Vinci's The Annunciation was out on loan to some bank in Tokyo.

I spent yesterday in the National Gallery. I gasped outloud when I saw the Arnolfini Portrait. I am such a geek.

St. Pats in the Jolly

There is a football match today that is cause for much more celebration than St. Pats. Chelsea and Sheffield are going at it and people are spilling out of the pubs. Ever once in awhile a loud roar will come from somewhere as someone makes a goal.

Not that I'm a practitioner of the St. Pats celebratory experience, it is intersting to note that the only bar I've seen putting it out there for the man who drove the snakes out of Ireland is a Canadian bar called The Maple Leaf.

I did my part by chatting up an Irish gentleman in the hotel bar and having shots of Jameson. Erin go bragh-less.