Alternate title: Dork + Google + Hip-Hop = ?
Can Internet answer Wildchild? I believe it can:
Answers Version (1 of 2)
[Goin' way, way back to the early days]
[Rememberin' well, seems like the other day]
[Goin' way, way back to the early days]
[Now when I mighta stayed from around the way]
[Goin' way, way back to the early days]
[Rememberin' well, seems like the other day]
[I just wish I knew]
Wildchild, check it.
I wish I knew if I woulda had a chance with Halle Berry at elementary
If this world we know was developed the way it was meant to be
A way to rid our street of corrupt cops up in Los Angeles
All female sexual thoughts perpetrated not scandalous
And why females are so overly sensitive
Why to this day a belt is a father's only form of discipline
Why major labels and artists rarely be seein' eye to eye
Why you never say your things to your loved ones before they die
But when they do, I wish I knew spiritually, if they still with you [iTunes]
Why you never stop drinking before the last drink hits you
Why is it okay to drink but marijuana's still illegal?
Though I don't smoke, I wish how to change it for my people.
How to read racist thoughts even before they get spoken
Which slot machine will hit the jackpot usin' my last token
[I just wish I knew]
You never know, right? The Wonder Years.
[Goin' way, way back to the early days]
[Rememberin' well, seems like the other day]
[Goin' way, way back to the early days]
[Now when I mighta stayed from around the way]
[Goin' way, way back to the early days]
[Rememberin' well, seems like the other day]
[I just wish I knew]
Uh, yeah.
I wish I knew the cure for the diseases and next week's lotto numbers
Terrorist acts before they planned and who they planned them under
How to prevent and conquer death.
I wish I knew if my family would be beside me when I be takin' my last breath
I know Mother Nature and rapists, two different death traps
I wish I knew the mindset of both, to catch 'em up in the act
And if there was someone else in the word who looks and acts just like me
A way to cop me a pair of Michael Jordan reissue Nikes
A way to end world sufferin'
Why interracial relationships are the key and most be hesitatin' to show love to them
If time travel's possible
How to return love back to my wife [iTunes], who's been there through every good and bad obstacle
And why people live with so much hate [iTunes]
Every good and bad secret about a girl on the first blind date
Yeah.
[I just wish I knew]
You never know, uh?
[Goin' way back]
I wish I knew why men lust for strip clubs
Why white labels exist and if your music ain't Outkast, you already know got dubs
Why females need so much attention and ill affection [iTunes]
If there was a scandal in the Bush presidential election
If UFOs really exist
When I'm at work, who will say the wrong thing next to me, get me pissed catch a fist?
If street beggars you know be frontin' and really got money
How to take MCs I hear been fakin' and then use 'em as crash dummies
How to film it and release it on a commercial
Take the place of programmers and play hip hop that's universal
No mainstream and underground records sales to control
So you won't know what's gonna be next, only music with soul
If my daughter will use the true path that God has laid
The key to success so all of my people can get paid.
[I just wish I knew]
You never know, uh. The Wonder Years.
[Goin' way, way back to the early days]
[Rememberin' well, seems like the other day]
[Goin' way, way back to the early days]
[Now when I mighta stayed from around the way]
[Goin' way, way back to the early days]
[Rememberin' well, seems like the other day]
[I just wish I knew]
You never know, uh? The Wonder Years
Or you can see for yourself:
Questions Version (2 of 2)
[Goin' way, way back to the early days]
[Rememberin' well, seems like the other day]
[Goin' way, way back to the early days]
[Now when I mighta stayed from around the way]
[Goin' way, way back to the early days]
[Rememberin' well, seems like the other day]
[I just wish I knew]
Wildchild, check it.
I wish I knew if I had woulda a chance with Halle Berry at elementary
If this world we know was developed the way it was meant to be
A way to rid our street of corrupt cops up in Los Angeles
All female sexual thoughts perpetrated not scandalous
And why females are so overly sensitive
Why to this day a belt is a father's only form of discipline
Why major labels and artists rarely be seein' eye to eye
Why you never say your things to your loved ones before they die
But when they do, I wish I knew spiritually, if they still with you
Why you never stop drinking before the last drink hits you
Why is it okay to drink but marijuana's still illegal?
Though I don't smoke, I wish how to change it for my people.
How to read racist thoughts even before they get spoken
Which slot machine will hit the jackpot usin' my last token
[I just wish I knew]
You never know, right? The Wonder Years.
[Goin' way, way back to the early days]
[Rememberin' well, seems like the other day]
[Goin' way, way back to the early days]
[Now when I mighta stayed from around the way]
[Goin' way, way back to the early days]
[Rememberin' well, seems like the other day]
[I just wish I knew]
Uh. Yeah.
I wish I knew the cure for the diseases and next week's lotto numbers
Terrorist acts before they planned and who they planned them under
How to prevent and conquer death.
I wish I knew if my family would be beside me when I be takin' my last breath
I know Mother Nature and rapists, two different death traps
I wish I knew the mindset of both, to catch 'em up in the act
And if there was someone else in the word who looks and acts just like me
A way to cop me a pair of Michael Jordan reissue Nikes
A way to end world sufferin'
Why interracial relationships are the key and most be hesitatin' to show love to them
If time travel's possible
How to return love back to my wife, who's been there through every good and bad obstacle
And why people live with so much hate
Every good and bad secret about a girl on the first blind date
Yeah.
[I just wish I knew]
You never know, uh?
[Goin' way back]
I wish I knew why men lust for strip clubs
Why white labels exist and if your music ain't Outkast, you already know got dubs (?)
Why females need so much attention and ill affection
If there was a scandal in the Bush presidential election
If UFOs really exist
When I'm at work, who will say the wrong thing next to me, get me pissed, catch a fist?
If street beggars you know be frontin' and really got money
How to take MCs I hear been fakin' and then use 'em as crash dummies
How to film it and release it on a commercial
Take the place of programmers and play hip hop that's universal
No mainstream and underground record sales to control
So you won't know what's gonna be next, only music with soul
If my daughter will use the true path that God has laid
The key to success so all of my people can get paid.
[I just wish I knew]
You never know, uh. The Wonder Years.
[Goin' way, way back to the early days]
[Rememberin' well, seems like the other day]
[Goin' way, way back to the early days]
[Now when I mighta stayed from around the way]
[Goin' way, way back to the early days]
[Rememberin' well, seems like the other day]
[I just wish I knew]
You never know, uh? The Wonder Years
Thursday, October 29, 2009
Friday, October 23, 2009
Fall Is Not a Time for Dan Brown
Fall reading spotted on the Brooklyn-bound F train: Meditations of Mind and Body, The Complete Dramatic Works of Samuel Beckett, Introduction to Scholastic Process. (I myself am listening to a Yale Intro. Psychology courses courtesy iTunes U.) Conclusion: Fall is when our brains go back to school (if not necessarily our bodies.)
Thursday, October 15, 2009
Q and W
Some shockingly typical Questions I have seriously considered just in the last 12 hours, and the reasons Why I'm Asking them (it's a Q & W).
Q: Can the past truly be said to exist if it no longer exists in the present?
W: Hearing this iTunes U lecture, in which a charmingly-accented biographer, Richard Carwardine, reminds us that Abraham Lincoln is the most biographied man to ever live. Then wondering if anyone can really be said to be right about Lincoln.
Q: What happens if the villain succeeds in Act 1?
W: Re-reading Mell's strangely gratifying first attempt at world domination in Narbonic: Director's Cut. (*spoiler:* Mell does okay, but later admits that she made some crucial mistakes.)
If the villain fails in Act 3, that's normal. If he succeeds, that's a tragedy. Plenty of villains are foiled in Act 1 only to make a better go of it in Act 3. But what if the villain succeeds in Act 1, and so thoroughly that there's no hope of beating him back?
Thing is, in the real world, villains succeed all the time. Stalin died sleeping in his own bed. People like Alexander the Great even occasionally conquer the world.
However, unless someone is particularly bad off or goes about seeking out people who are, we don't usually think of this as a world created by villains. We tend to accept the world as it is presented to us early on.
Maybe that's because the run of history is where a traditional story act structure breaks down. It's like Malcolm says in Jurassic Park (page 369 of the paperback, or you can search for "destroy the world") - we may be in peril, but "the world" is not. Maybe it's not about good or evil, only change.
Maybe I should change my blog's motto to "making the case for relativism." Or is that too subjective?
Q: Can the past truly be said to exist if it no longer exists in the present?
W: Hearing this iTunes U lecture, in which a charmingly-accented biographer, Richard Carwardine, reminds us that Abraham Lincoln is the most biographied man to ever live. Then wondering if anyone can really be said to be right about Lincoln.
Q: What happens if the villain succeeds in Act 1?
W: Re-reading Mell's strangely gratifying first attempt at world domination in Narbonic: Director's Cut. (*spoiler:* Mell does okay, but later admits that she made some crucial mistakes.)
If the villain fails in Act 3, that's normal. If he succeeds, that's a tragedy. Plenty of villains are foiled in Act 1 only to make a better go of it in Act 3. But what if the villain succeeds in Act 1, and so thoroughly that there's no hope of beating him back?
Thing is, in the real world, villains succeed all the time. Stalin died sleeping in his own bed. People like Alexander the Great even occasionally conquer the world.
However, unless someone is particularly bad off or goes about seeking out people who are, we don't usually think of this as a world created by villains. We tend to accept the world as it is presented to us early on.
Maybe that's because the run of history is where a traditional story act structure breaks down. It's like Malcolm says in Jurassic Park (page 369 of the paperback, or you can search for "destroy the world") - we may be in peril, but "the world" is not. Maybe it's not about good or evil, only change.
Maybe I should change my blog's motto to "making the case for relativism." Or is that too subjective?
Friday, October 09, 2009
ribbles on Taliban on Nobel Committee on Obama
The Taliban is apparently immune to both aerial bombardment and irony:
"The Nobel prize for peace? Obama should have won the 'Nobel Prize for escalating violence and killing civilians'," Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid told Reuters by telephone from an undisclosed location.
(via Reuters)
"The Nobel prize for peace? Obama should have won the 'Nobel Prize for escalating violence and killing civilians'," Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid told Reuters by telephone from an undisclosed location.
(via Reuters)
Sunday, September 27, 2009
Outbreak Theory
Just finished reading a very comprehensive New Yorker article [log-in required] on the events leading up to the collapse of Lehman and, by extension, the world economic crisis.
The article's conclusion is that despite the extensive (and arguably justified) critism of the bailout, the feeling that at least some comprehensive plan was in place prevented the worldwide financial panic we feared in the nervous months after Lehman.
This reminded me of two things. First, an article in Wired about virus theory wherein researchers ran thousands of computer simulations to predict the spread of world-threatening viruses if they found their way in to the population. The other, a practical guide to removing stains.
In both cases, the conclusions were the same. I doesn't so much matter what you do as long as you DO SOMETHING. Close the schools, quarantine, stop interstate travel, rub with soap and warm water - any preventative measure is better than nothing and, generally speaking, enough to stop a crisis.
The article's conclusion is that despite the extensive (and arguably justified) critism of the bailout, the feeling that at least some comprehensive plan was in place prevented the worldwide financial panic we feared in the nervous months after Lehman.
This reminded me of two things. First, an article in Wired about virus theory wherein researchers ran thousands of computer simulations to predict the spread of world-threatening viruses if they found their way in to the population. The other, a practical guide to removing stains.
In both cases, the conclusions were the same. I doesn't so much matter what you do as long as you DO SOMETHING. Close the schools, quarantine, stop interstate travel, rub with soap and warm water - any preventative measure is better than nothing and, generally speaking, enough to stop a crisis.
Monday, September 21, 2009
First Draft Complete, Cue Soul Searching
This weekend, I biked out to the end of an isolated pier in Red Hook and read the first draft of my script, out loud, to myself.
This was a big moment for me. Just like it says in the book, there are things I thought were there that weren't there, and things that are there that I had never expected. The most unexpected of the latter: what I have seems to be a completed story. It's a script. It's a first draft, with big chunks missing and other chunks that will need to be completely reimagined and rewritten, but it is a whole script, heavy, made of paper, physically indistinguishable from, say, Good Will Hunting or Poltergeist 2, except for the words on the page.
This is a HUGE relief.
I had gotten so focused on each individual part of the script that I didn't quite understand that by the end I would have a whole thing, a coherent work that I had written, an object made of words.
Right now, I am sitting in the lower 60s section of Riverside Park, reading my reference book, and thinking about what comes next. I am trying to figure out what the biggest changes will need to be so as to make them first. Giving my main character more of a role in the main action of the story seems to be my greatest initial challenge. There will be many others.
In the book it says that once you finish your first draft, you're a writer. I don't know if that's true exactly. But when I was working on the first draft I found that the best time to stop writing was when I started wondering if maybe I was doing absolutely everthing wrong - something I wondered literally every day that I wrote. I assumed that once I'd finished a first draft, I'd spend the next week as drunk as physically possible. Instead, I find myself thinking, anticipating, and hoping just to make it through the second draft.
Wish me luck.
This was a big moment for me. Just like it says in the book, there are things I thought were there that weren't there, and things that are there that I had never expected. The most unexpected of the latter: what I have seems to be a completed story. It's a script. It's a first draft, with big chunks missing and other chunks that will need to be completely reimagined and rewritten, but it is a whole script, heavy, made of paper, physically indistinguishable from, say, Good Will Hunting or Poltergeist 2, except for the words on the page.
This is a HUGE relief.
I had gotten so focused on each individual part of the script that I didn't quite understand that by the end I would have a whole thing, a coherent work that I had written, an object made of words.
Right now, I am sitting in the lower 60s section of Riverside Park, reading my reference book, and thinking about what comes next. I am trying to figure out what the biggest changes will need to be so as to make them first. Giving my main character more of a role in the main action of the story seems to be my greatest initial challenge. There will be many others.
In the book it says that once you finish your first draft, you're a writer. I don't know if that's true exactly. But when I was working on the first draft I found that the best time to stop writing was when I started wondering if maybe I was doing absolutely everthing wrong - something I wondered literally every day that I wrote. I assumed that once I'd finished a first draft, I'd spend the next week as drunk as physically possible. Instead, I find myself thinking, anticipating, and hoping just to make it through the second draft.
Wish me luck.
Sunday, August 30, 2009
And Waitresses Learn to Hate Food
It's always tricky watching a movie when you're writing a movie. Good example of the worst case scenario: I was watching Empire Strikes Back with a friend last night just after she read the first draft of my script, and she decided to illustrate a point about a central conflict for the main character by saying "See - your movie should be more like that."
No movie should ever be compared to Empire because Empire is (arguably) the best movie ever, and my shitty first draft of a script should even more never be compared to Empire when I know there's a problem with the scenes with the dad character and I'm working on it, thank you. It's like if I tried to pick up chicks at the Cattyshack — it's a losing man's game.
Then there's the TV Tropes effect where you spend so much time thinking about media that you just spend the whole movie waiting for the act break, the page 45 analogy, the part on page 75 where the hero almost give up, blah blah blah.
But - sometimes! - you watch a movie and say "Aha! That part of that movie is great in EXACTLY THE SAME WAY as a similar part in my movie will be great!"
This just happened to me.
I am watching Sneakers, an old favorite of mine. Like my movie, Sneakers has a team of people working on a single thing. And it's a heist movie, so it's a team of quirky character actors. Oh, and the cast is fucking brilliant - like, Pres. Roslin, Sundance Kid and Ghandi brilliant.
Anyway, some of the greatest moments in this movie are when everybody these brilliant character actors get to just turn and react to something. There first time Robert Redford casually mentions Mary McDonnell, everyone just turns and looks at him.
It's a fucking genius moment. And, the best thing about this moment - super easy to write. I can watch this moment and think "Aha! I'll bet my movie will have a ton of moments where everyone turns around and looks at one of the other people! I can in some way be as good as Sneakers, one of my favorite movies!"
Now, if I can just work in some light saber battles ...
No movie should ever be compared to Empire because Empire is (arguably) the best movie ever, and my shitty first draft of a script should even more never be compared to Empire when I know there's a problem with the scenes with the dad character and I'm working on it, thank you. It's like if I tried to pick up chicks at the Cattyshack — it's a losing man's game.
Then there's the TV Tropes effect where you spend so much time thinking about media that you just spend the whole movie waiting for the act break, the page 45 analogy, the part on page 75 where the hero almost give up, blah blah blah.
But - sometimes! - you watch a movie and say "Aha! That part of that movie is great in EXACTLY THE SAME WAY as a similar part in my movie will be great!"
This just happened to me.
I am watching Sneakers, an old favorite of mine. Like my movie, Sneakers has a team of people working on a single thing. And it's a heist movie, so it's a team of quirky character actors. Oh, and the cast is fucking brilliant - like, Pres. Roslin, Sundance Kid and Ghandi brilliant.
Anyway, some of the greatest moments in this movie are when everybody these brilliant character actors get to just turn and react to something. There first time Robert Redford casually mentions Mary McDonnell, everyone just turns and looks at him.
It's a fucking genius moment. And, the best thing about this moment - super easy to write. I can watch this moment and think "Aha! I'll bet my movie will have a ton of moments where everyone turns around and looks at one of the other people! I can in some way be as good as Sneakers, one of my favorite movies!"
Now, if I can just work in some light saber battles ...
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