I've always said that I don't believe in writer's block. You just need to sit your ass down and start putting one word after another. It's just like laying bricks. One by one -- you've got a sentence, a paragraph, a page. And before you know it, you've written the Great American Novel. Simple. No magic. No heavenly inspiration. No angst. No excuses.
So why haven't I written anything for the past six months? I had an idea for a screenplay that really had me going. I wrote an outline and even the first few scenes. Then I kind of got distracted. A little while later, I had another idea for a short movie. Figured out the basic premise and the overall theme of the piece. Knew where the jokes would go. Never quite got around to writing it. A few weeks ago, I heard about a contest for a one-hour television pilot. Came up with some characters, basic plot, cool title and the opening scene... Nothing.
So what's the deal, has the well run dry? Have I lost the spark? Is the honeymoon over? Do I rely too heavily on cliches? Or could it be the dreaded Writer's Block?
Writer's Block. The very words invoke a tomblike sense of finality. They conjure up images of a vast murky abyss that echoes with the stillness of eternity and reeks of the foul funk of two day old Chinese food. Even to acknowledge its existence brings you another treacherous step closer the brink. And once you fall into that abyss, you may never claw your way out. It feeds on your fear, expanding with each excuse, widening with every self-pitying whine. Its walls become sheer cliffs of ice where neither hand nor foot can find purchase. The very sky is made dim by the smoky shadow that looms like a shroud over its vast expanse. It envelopes and overwhelms, suffocates and consumes, leaving you numb and hollow, gasping for inspiration and praying for redemption.
But it never comes. You've given in. Now your at its mercy. And it wants your soul.
You struggle. You think you still have a chance. Flailing about wildly you reach out for anything that might serve to empower you. Blackness overtakes you and the roar of oblivion thunders in your ears. You scratch at the last tatters of vanishing reason...
And then, you feel something. Something solid. Something real. A book.
Your trembling fingers fumble with the cover. Blurry shapes slowly take form. A word. A sentence. A paragraph. A page. You read on. Half-formed thoughts wink like fireflies in the gloom. A light appears in the distance. An idea. Magic. Inspiration.
A world is created from nothing. People are born, live and die in a universe cradled in your hands. A lifetime's experience is captured in walls of imagination. A story becomes real.
So, I have a new project to work on. I'm not sure if I'll finish it. Right now it's just an idea. But as long as the ideas keep coming, that's enough for me.
Thanks for helping me through my writer's block.
Rich
There's such a thing as being too clever sometimes. Like the other night when I came home from the movies and parked my prized Honda CRV across from the parking lot of the local bar. Knowing that they were having a big beer bash that night, I thought "no way am I going to leave my car here, directly in the path of dozens of half-blind, judgement-impaired drunk drivers!" No sir, I decided to play it safe. I moved my car way down the block to a protected location, congratulating myself on my foresight and prudence. As I walked back to my apartment, I noticed a big black Cadillac Escalade wedging itself into the space I had just vacated. I couldn't help but think what a great target that Escalade would make for some inebriated slob, careening out of the parking lot a few minutes after closing time. Oh well, we can't all be geniuses. I slept soundly that night, secure in the wisdom of my precautions.
The next morning as I walked down the sidewalk towards my car, I could have sworn that I had parked it in a different spot than the one it now occupied. In addition, it seemed to be sitting at a slightly cockeyed angle to the curb. I was sure I had done a better job of parking than that. I walked out into the street to get a better look. Sure enough, my car was crooked as hell. I immediately flashed on the time my old Toyota had been banged so hard that it was shoved up against the curb. Damn these drunks!
When I got closer I realized that it was worse than I thought. My front left wheel was jammed up against the inside of the fender. I felt the bottom of my stomach drop out and a wave of rage flood my brain. I got in and tried to move the car, thinking I could take it to the repair shop down the street, but it was undriveable. What the hell happened? There was hardly any damage to the body, but the wheel was completely cocked and the car looked like it had been bounced several feet. I looked around and noticed another car parked on the other side of the street that had its whole left side crushed in. I figured some idiot had bounced off that car and sideswiped mine. I was completely freaked. Here I've only had the car about ten days and it's already wrecked! It seemed like every time I try to do something for myself it ends up in disaster. Oh, and did I mention that I hadn't changed my insurance policy over to include collision coverage? I still had the minimum coverage that I had on my Toyota and was planning to update the policy after I sold it. But at least I still had my Toyota, and despite it's squealing brakes, smoking engine and dangling bumper, it got me to work.
That evening I was out looking at the damage when a guy called out from an upstairs window, "Is that your car?" I nodded. "I'll be right down," he said. He comes out of his house and introduces himself (his name is Marvin) and asks, "Do you have any idea what happened here last night?" I said, "I guess someone hit my car." He laughed and then told me the whole story:
Apparently this guy, we'll call him the Asshole, pulled away from the curb at the end of the block and proceeded up the street towards my car. Marvin happened to be returning home at the time and noticed that the Asshole's vehicle was swerving over into the wrong lane. As Marvin watched, Asshole clipped the front of my car, driving it backwards a full ten feet until it jammed up against the curb. At that point, Asshole's 1999 Malibu flipped completely over and landed on an Acura Integra parked across the street. Moments later Asshole emerged from the car, looking none too sober.
Soon thereafter, several police cars appeared on the scene, along with a fire truck, EMT's and a tow truck. Dozens of onlookers gathered around to watch. The street was blocked for hours. The tow truck had to drag my car out of the way in order to get Asshole's Malibu off of the Integra. The police arrested the Asshole and charged him with DUI. Marvin gave a clear, credible and comprehensive statement and the guy who owned the Integra took digital pictures of the whole thing. His name is Ralph, and as it happens, he was out walking his dog and heard Marvin was telling me about the wreck. Neither one of them could believe that I had missed the whole thing, considering the tremendous noise of the crash, followed by the sirens, bright lights and general commotion that followed. I was kind of surprised myself. But, I am a pretty sound sleeper. Besides, I lived in Brooklyn for nine years, so things like gunshots, police sirens, car wrecks and loud screams are as soothing to me as the sound of a babbling brook or the gentle ocean surf.
Anyway, I spent the next few weeks dealing with the Asshole's insurance company, who turned out to be quite cooperative and have agreed to pay for all repairs. Those repairs ended up being pretty extensive, as there was a lot of damage to the front axle. On an interesting side note, however, the one item that needed attention on the car when I bought it just happened to be a loose axle boot on the front left side. Since I'm now getting an entirely new axle, I won't have to worry about replacing that anymore.
The car is still at the shop where it was towed by a Russian guy named Shawn who kept saying, "don't vorry, is collusion center, is fix everything, no problem." For a while I wasn't sure exactly what a "collusion" center did, but now I realize that they try to find as many things wrong with your car as possible without going over the amount that the insurance company will pay for repairs. Fortunately, in my situation they seemed to have reached just the right balance, so that the bill for all the repairs will be very nearly equal to what I paid for the car in the first place, but still a couple thousand less than its market value.
It seems that I lucked out after all. I outsmarted myself by moving my car to what I thought was a safer parking space, but was in fact directly in the path of a drunken driver. And that damn Escalade got through the night without a scratch. Have I learned my lesson? I don't know. No matter what you try to do to prepare yourself, something always happens that you never saw coming. I'm sure I'll be a little nervous the first few times I park my car out on the street again. And I'll probably go ahead and get the collision coverage on my insurance. And next time there's a beer bash, I'm parking behind that goddamn Escalade!
Good Luck to you all,
Hollywood Dick
I had lunch at an ultra-chic restaurant called The Ivy on Sunday. I had a salad. This is how far I've come since I moved out here. I didn't think it could happen to me, but the fact is I drive an SUV, I have regular appointments with a woman who calls herself a "Synergistic Healing Practitioner" and I'm on the weirdest diet in the world that includes drinking a concoction made with coconut oil, grapefruit seed extract, almond milk and a mixture of alfalfa, kelp, wheatgrass and algae. What the hell have I turned into?
It all started last year when I got sick and couldn't seem to get better. After a few months of feeling terrible, I was willing to try anything. My friend Patti, whom I met when she acted in my short movie, suggested that I try Cranial Sacral Release Therapy. In addition to acting, Patti is also a certified massage therapist, and Cranial Sacral Therapy or CST is the latest thing. She said it might help with my low energy, and as a matter of fact it did. The first few sessions were pretty amazing -- that's when I experienced a tremendous release of tension and energy just from having her apply a little pressure to certain spots on the back of my head. And I definitely felt better afterwards. More energy, less tension.
Patti also suggested I start taking acidophilus for my stomach. I'd been having trouble digesting food and that was wearing me down even more. The acidophilus helped a lot. I got to the point where I could almost get through a whole day without feeling exhausted. Patti went out of town for several months and during that time I actually did start to get worse. I went back to my regular doctor again and he told me I was perfectly healthy.
Meanwhile I was trying to relearn guitar since one of the guys in the band decided to quit and I moved from being harmonica player to harmonica and rhythm guitar. One night after practice, when I was particularly worn-out, I pulled into traffic and got sideswiped by a guy making an unannounced lane change. This made about the third time my front bumper had been knocked off. I'd already spent a thousand bucks fixing the front and this just added insult to injury. I got a Russian mechanic to bolt it back on for me after several other body shops refused to work on it.
Finally Patti came back and I started the therapy again. My car was in decent shape and the band was really coming together. I was back on track. But then one of the cases I was working on went to trial and I was plunged into an overtime nightmare. I had been doing all right handling regular workdays, but the added stress of preparing for trial and working 60-70 hour weeks was making me feel exhausted, angry and muddled.
I couldn't seem to shake this damn thing, whatever is was. The doctor had already ruled out all the serious stuff as well as mono. I asked him about Chronic Fatigue Syndrome but he just scoffed. I started looking up things on the internet and found that there are a lot of people out there who seem to be struggling with the same problem. Only no one seems to know what it is or how to get rid of it.
Patti came to the rescue once again, suggesting I undergo an herbal intestinal cleansing program. I agreed to give it a try and for a week I was drinking a mixture of charcoal, clay, flax seed and pectin to help clean out my gut. Afterwards I felt a little better, but I still wasn't back to normal. But in reading the catalogue from the American Botanical Pharmacy (where I got the gut cleanser) I came across something called Candida Albicans, which is a form of yeast that lives inside our body and sometimes can become overgrown. The symptoms of the overgrowth were identical to all of the problems I'd been having for the past year. And one of the causes of the overgrowth is taking antibiotics. I had been given antibiotics by both my dentist and my doctor about four times in a three month period right before all this began. Before that I hadn't taken any since the eighties.
So now maybe I knew what was wrong, but how to get rid of it? One way is by going on a strict diet and eliminating sugar, starch, yeast and gluten from your diet. Sounds simple enough, but what does that leave you with? Salad. No dressing, though, because vinegar is fermented. And no croutons! Hell for most of my life the only reason I ate salad was for the croutons. Anyway I decided to try the diet and see if would help. Plus I got something called Superfood from the herb doc to supplement my diet. And I'm eating lots of garlic.
Meanwhile, some jerk smashed into my bumper again. This time I just tied it back on. To hell with it. Then I got a leak in my power steering system that caused big clouds of smoke to come billowing out from under my hood every time I stopped the car. I decided it was time for a new ride. After trying out several different models, I settled on the Honda CRV. I'm just getting sick of being stuck behind all those other SUVs and not being able to see anything. I found a real nice one owned by a couple who live in Pasadena and are in a rock band. They were very cool and I think I got a great deal. Only one little problem -- they owned a dog.
I didn't notice at first, but the day after I bought the car the dog smell really hit me. I really wanted to get rid of it before my niece Annie and her boyfriend Nate came up to visit, because I was planning to give them a tour of Hollywood in my new car and I didn't want them to suffocate. I took the car to a car wash on Sunset where they charged my a hundred bucks to "detail" the inside. Afterwards, when I got it home, I found a clump of dog hair in the back seat! I'm not sure what "detail" means, but I guess it doesn't include "vacuuming." I took the car back and this time they really went at it. When I got it home it smelled like cleaning fluid. At least it was an improvement over the dog smell.
But the next day when I went out to the car the damn dog smell was back! I ran to the grocery store and bought a can of air freshener and fumigated the inside. Annie and her boyfriend were due in a half hour. The air freshener seemed to help, but I noticed when they got in the car the first thing Annie and Nate did was roll down their windows.
We began our tour of Hollywood with a fancy lunch at The Ivy, pretty much the place to see and be seen. Just like Danny DeVito's character in "Get Shorty" does in the scene filmed at The Ivy, I had to order off the menu to accommodate my bizzarre diet. But the waiter took it all in stride. I'm sure it happens all the time. The rest of the day we visited some of my favorite spots like the Chateau Marmont and the Greystone Mansion. But I think Annie and Nate were most impressed when we went by Ozzie's house in Beverly Hills and Ashton Kutcher's restaurant Dolce where they filmed one of the episodes of his MTV show "Punk'd." I'm astonished that I'm hip enough to know what the hell that means.
Anyway, that's more or less how I evolved from a normal, everyday ex-Brooklynite to an avocado eating, SUV driving, MTV watching Hollywood flake who gets cranial massages and has his car "detailed."
Don't judge me too harshly. I've been out here for almost five years -- a man can only hold out for so long. Don't laugh. It could happen to you.
"Hollywood" Dick
