Twenty Twenty

Here is, in the form of 20 facts essentially everything I did during my twentieth year. I consider this sufficiently productive. I’ll see if I can’t one up every one of these statistics in my 21^st despite the sure to be increased influence of alcohol.

Watched 292 movies, 264 of which I had never seen before.

-Top 3: Rio Bravo, Man on Wire, Short Cuts

Read 22 novels, including 5 by Ian Fleming.

-Top 3: Shutter Island, How I Paid for College, JPOD

Completed the first draft of my first novel, Dynasty

Completed my eighth feature screenplay, Catalyst

Filmed four short films: Attempted Plagiarism, Stranger Stories, 6.0, and MAD vengeance

Worked on 30 short film sets, primarily in the capacities of Script Supervisor or First AD

-Top 3: Five Stages, Surf Dracula, The Forever Room

Worked as Script Supervisor for the feature film, A Beautiful Belly

Wrote or co-wrote 15 short films that have been or are being produced

-Top 3: Five Stages, Pleasing Pablo, Surface Issues

Wrote 25 original short film screenplays

Wrote 12 entries for my blog, Something Clever

Created the blog, Fifty Word Films, and wrote 33 reviews for it.

-Top 3: Star Trek, State of Play, Public Enemies

Added 119 songs to my itunes library

-Top 3: Wise Up by Aimie Mann, Get Back by Ludacris, The Fear by Lily Allen

Completed 14 original acrylic paintings

-Top 3: In Film, Spectrum, Mail Flower

In Film

Spectrum

and obviously:

Mail Flower

The Hand Froster

I saw The Hurt Locker the other day and discovered that, not only is it not about a method of high school torture, but it is in fact a powerful and exciting movie. What amazed me the most about the subject matter was the way that these men kept their heads about them in situations where the exact opposite was likely to happen. I wondered if I would be able to keep my cool while carefully defusing bombs in the trunk of a car, never aware of whether or not the bomber was watching me do it. Well today, I learned the answer to that question.

For those of you who aren’t Brazilian, a king cake is in essence a giant colorful cinnamon role eaten in February to honor the birth of the cannibal king Mangebebe, a monarch best remembered for his habit of baking children. Well, these cakes are popular in Baton Rouge and when Sexy (remember her?) most recently returned from said city, her mother brought with them said cake. The cake was wrapped in the sort of plastic bag that you might use to contain a hand once you had detached it from a corpse if you didn’t want to get your car bloody on the way to wetlands. Of course, this bag presented a threat.

After getting a knife and untwisting the tie-twist, I opened the bag and found to my chagrin that the inside was coated in colorful frosting. Now, I was wearing an incredibly expensive albeit bought on sale thermal long-sleeve shirt, and immediately realized the challenge. I would have to hold the bag open with one hand while sliding the other hand perfectly down the center, Operation style, without touching the edges lest I frost my shirt. Then I would need to cut off an adequate piece, and should I fail to use a surgeon’s accuracy, a small child might lose a limb.

I’m proud to say that I kept my head about me (as did the baby) and cut a piece off (of the cake). I then used a long pair of tongs to extract the cake, and was soon eating it peacefully nearby. I never once worried about whether a cannibal or baker might be watching me from a nearby tower (though now I’m a bit nervous about it), and it seems to me that, hotheaded though I may have been, the mission was a complete success.

So, explosive deactivation in combat situations can’t really be that difficult, can it? Right?

C.C. Starbuck and the Fifty Word Films

As stated in my last entry, I am contractually obligated to make every possible effort to ‘one up’ everything that Nick does. I also explained that I was rekindling this blog in response to his creation of Nick at a Loss which, I urge you to check out; makes my stuff look amazing. Anyway, no sooner had I published my last entry, when I received a call from my legal counsel informing me that technically, according to Florida State law, in order to fulfill my end of the contract I needed to create a new blog. So I grumbled audibly and then did just that.

My new blog operates on an entirely different premise than does this one. Whereas something Clever is in essence an egomaniacal site devoted primarily to me, Fifty Word Films has yet to contain any mention of its author. Instead, the concept of the blog is that I write reviews of films that I have seen recently and that these reviews meet the following requirements. They must be snarky, honest, informative, and exactly 50 words long. Of course, whereas this blog will be updated sporadically (probably once or twice a week), FWF will be updated as quickly as I am able to crank out reviews. So, if you get the chance, swing by Fifty Word Films and check it out. But, don’t let it distract you too much from Nick at a Loss, because if that one days, I may have to shut down one of mine (I suspect my superiority contract has a clause somewhere about ‘two upping’ though I will have to check).

In other news, I believe that last night I finally settled on a title and plot for the seminal film of my film school career. The title is… ‘C.C.Starbuck and the Espresso Pods from Planet Excellent.’ Don’t worry. The film won’t be anywhere near as long or as serious as its title. Here is a brief synopsis in, of course, exactly fifty words.

‘Renowned but retired cocoa expert, C.C.Starbuck, is called upon by the Orlando police department to help stop the spread of hostile alien parasites who, when consumed, take over their hosts and imbue them with the ability to spit inky squid-like clouds, but make their eyes disappear completely when they laugh.’

Working on the script now.

Lossless!

And so I am again drawn back to this blog, this time out of a sense of competition. You see, my roommate Nick, better known to you as (321)745-7224 (though anonymity now serves no purpose) has recently fallen into a bit of an arctic tundra rut and I jokingly suggested ‘Why don’t you blog about it?’ And, for the first time in my entire life, someone misinterpreted my sarcasm as a serious suggestion and thus ‘Nick at a Loss’ was born.

Nick gave me his first entry to proofread before publishing it. I corrected a few errors, told him it was a piece of bull-malarkey, and learned two things: A) Nick is not the happiest of people and I should probably stop making fun of his hulk arms, and B) He’s a pretty damn eloquent pessimist despite a few typos (which in all likelihood were caused by the aforementioned hulk arms) and definitely qualifies as competition.

Now, years ago, Nick and I signed a contract stating that I am obligated to make a genuine effort to one up everything he does, and whether that means walking out of the bathroom in a towel every time he has a girl over, or eating twice as many hot dogs, or just finding a taller chair than his at any restaurant we go to, I have up until this point fulfilled my end of the bargain. I worry now that I will not be able to do so. Though he lacks my height, charm, and dashing good looks he more than makes up for it with his mastery of the English language, his incredible Christmas light collection, and his mental thesaurus of words that mean ‘cold.’ I may have met my match.

So I will, for the third-thousandth time resume maintenance of Something Clever. I will do as Nick is doing and simply type sporadic musings about what I am doing and/or thinking at any given time and we’ll see if I can’t maintain a sufficient level of cheer to offset the frigid icy chill of Nicholas Ian Lougheed’s blizzard of frosty horse crap.

Because I, dear sir, am not at a loss!

Love is

Actually not copyright infringement. All the images I used were marked for reuse with modification.

Pope Art

Hehheh.

Bush Ts 3

Again about the copyright thing...