1 post from February 2009

So I've been toying with the idea of writing a book.  I started off with one idea that was really solid and spent a little time pecking away.  It was kind of a comedy / horror idea that wasn't quite as spoofy as the Scary Movie franchise, but was more along the lines of a horror story with tongue in cheek (but also not quite as actual horror as Nightmare on Elm Street).  After a few days of planning and formulating...Nothing to show of it.  I then moved over to a pretty interesting idea that kind'a falls in the category of romantic dark comedy... I already have all the actors and actresses in mind to play the parts when it's optioned for a major Hollywood motion picture (I typed "Halloween motion picture" by mistake, giggled and erased it) but again, nothing came of it.  So now I'm back to square one and really kind'a down on myself.  They say it takes at least a year to write a novel and here I sit with absolutely zilch and a year stretched out ahead of me.  It's a little unnerving to say the least.  So yeah, if you have any creative suggestions on what I can do to aide the process of novel writing (software, techniques, inspiration, etc) feel free to shoot them my way.  I have been toying with the idea of a completely senseless story that goes on and on and never really accomplishes anything (much like this blog post) but I'm afraid that if I put my heart into it and spend a year (or more) pounding it out, I might end up with a useless book of rambling that has no market.  Of course, there's also the comedy hostage movie, the collection of bedtime stories, the young adult adventure novel, the dark cartoon-character-in-real-life idea... I have no shortage of ideas and no real motivation to spend a year working on any of them.  What I need is a writing partner / ghost writer / manager. Anyone? Anyone??

So I've been sick lately.  It all spawn from my precious little disease bag son and has grown and mutated in me in a number of ways.  I started out just stuffed up and generally nauseous (typed "nauseating", friends and ex-girlfriends nodded, I giggled and deleted it) and then that lead to head and body aching.  Then I passed through sore throat and fever, took a turn at chills and runny nose and have now crashed at the intersection of stuffy, sore throat and cough. It's been going on for about a week now and I'm about ready for it to end.  But overall it's not that bad.  My sister gave me about a dozen packs of Emergen-C (I swear by the stuff) and it has kept my head just above the water.  Between that and nightly doses of Alka Seltzer, I think I've actually had it pretty good.

And while I'm on the subject of health I wanna share a little something I've come across.  My mom has had the grocery list of ailments throughout my lifetime - Colitis, Crohn's Disease, Acid Reflux, GERD, Depression, etc.  My grandmother also suffered from dementia and eventually died of complications from Alzheimers.  We in doing my own Dr. Rush research (I tell ya, it's bad news to do it) I came across a little something called Candida.  Candida is a naturally occurring yeast in your stomach that helps break up food and it kind'a keeps bad things in check.  Well apparently you can get in a cycle of acid reflux caused by candida which helps the candida spread which causes more acid reflux, etc... which eventually leads to all the ailments I listed above.  The whole shebang.  Since this candida is a yeast, it feeds on sugar and then it produces alcohol.  So everywhere it is in your body, it's leeching sugar from cells and dumping out alcohol.  In your stomach that's no problem, it just passes to the liver which filters it out, but in the rest of your body, it's pretty bad news.  Not to mention you have this aggressive yeast growing all inside you and eventually traveling through your blood stream.  The key to getting this in check is to cut out all sugar.  Fructose, sucrose... anything that ends in -ose is sugar.  Corn syrup, you name it.  Also cut back on carbohydrates. Red meat. Dairy. Cheese. Anything good with taste and flavor.  You exist on a diet of rabbit foot - leafy greens, salads, brocolli, etc.  This starves the candida and eventually eliminates from areas where it shouldn't be, thereby curing or lessening the effect of many ailments.

Now here's the kicker.  For acid reflux, doctors prescribe acid blockers.  Which cures the feeling of acid reflux, but never touches the cause.  So you are stuck in a cycle of always taking them and it makes the pain go away and keeps down the acid, but really makes it easier for candida to survive and spread.  I kid you not.  Go Google it.  Anything doctors prescribe for any ailment I listed is only putting a bandaid on an amputated limb.  So I read this information and I said "hmm, why not" and I spent a couple days with no sugar, no milk, no bread, no beef... I ate fish, chicken and salads.  And you know what? I felt a million times better. My acid reflux stopped, I had a little vertigo that vanished, I had a stiffness in my neck which is gone... I feel like a new man.  I suggest you look into it and for God's sake stop taking that Prilosec.

So yeah, a half hour later and I'm still not tired.  I thought that if I just rambled that it would wear my brain out and I'd feel like trying this sleep things again, but you know what?  It takes a licking but keeps on ticking.  I could prolly sit here right now and pound out a 3 volume novel about just about anything and what do I do?  I ramble on and on to no one in particular.  But even in doing that, I don't think it will be my longest blog post ever.  Lemme scroll up and see...

Wow, yeah. This is a pretty long blog post.

So what else is going on?  I just got the new Incredibad album.  For those of you who don't know, Incredibad is a comedy skit / rap group that is known by the other name The Lonely Island.  If that still doesn't ring any bells, you are surely familiar with Andy Samburg of Saturday Night Live fame.  Well he originally started out as part of an internet meme group called The Lonely Island. (www.thelonelyisland.com)  They were discovered by Lorne Michaels of SNL, who hired them on the show.  They are all three writers, Andy is in the cast, Akiva directs the digital shorts and Jorma writes the music (Lazy Sunday, Natlie's Rap, I'm On A Boat) and also acts in some of the Digital Shorts.  I was a fan of theirs way back before they were "discovered" (yup, that's me bragging my geek cred) and it was good to see them make it big...

BUT, listening to their CD it really makes me go "Now why in the hell am I not doing that?".  Write funny rap songs about losing bowel control and how good it is to eat a Hot Pocket?  No, that's not on their album, but it might as well be.  I could do that.  The problem is, I don't do it.  I have a bajillion ideas and what are they good for?  I just let them sit and fester until someone comes along and does it and gets popular for it.  Here are the top three "could'a / would'a / should'a" moments in my life...

(1) "Fat" by "Weird Al" Yankovic - Granted I was in junior high at the time and had no chance to ever do anything with it, but a friend and I actually wrote the parody of "Bad" within the week that Michael Jackson's album came out and it was remarkably similar to Al's version and included love of food and fat jokes.  It's as if he reached in our adolescent minds and ripped off our idea, so much so that our friends at school were absolutely convinced (mainly since I was a HUGE "Weird Al" fan and even carried a "Close Person Friend of Al" Fan Club card in my wallet) that we gave the idea to Al.

(2) Blankman - Yeah, not much to brag about, but I wrote the movie "Blankman" starring Damon Wayans.  I had just graduated from highschool and finished a movie adaptation of a spoof dork superhero character I created called Captain Dork-O.  Anyone who knew me in highschool knows what I'm talking about.  I drew it everywhere.  It was my alter ego.  Well I got the bright idea to drop that script in an envelope and mail it to Fox because the Fox Network had just come on the air and I thought they were weird and hip enough to get it.  Well they got it alright.  I got a letter back saying that they "couldn't accept unauthorized script submissions blah blah blah" and a few years later... Blankman.  It's the same premise, the same storyline, a lot of the same gags.  It was Captain Dork-O through and through.  Granted that movie sucked ass, so I'm kind'a glad they didn't make my movie, because as a highschool kid I would have had no creative control and it would'a ended up just like it was except I would'a gotten paid.

(3) Wario / Warioware - Yup, the ugly little anti-Mario was mine too.  It was right before I started junior highschool and Nintendo Power magazine had a contest to "Create The Ultimate Videogame".  So I create this game called Janitor Dudley in the Nintendo Factory. (Lame I know, but I was like, what, 12?)  [ Side note : Janitor Dudley became Captain Dork-O's alter ego once I reached highschool ]  Anyway, Janitor Dudley worked at the "Nintendo Factory" and one night something goes wrong and the games are unleashed in the factory.  So you run around collecting keys and you'd go into rooms where you got to play short snippets of popular Nintendo games (Punch-Out, Rad Racer, Mach Rider, Kung Fu, Super Mario Bros., Metroid, Zelda, etc.) and if you didn't die, you unlocked more of the factory and got to move on.  That game idea became Warioware, and the kicker is... The bad guy in the game was a playmate of Mario and Luigi who felt jilted and turned to evil.  In my version his name was Fredrico (admittedly, Wario is WAY better a name), but he even had the zig-zag moustache and everything, although he looked just like Mario.  In fairness, the contest rules did state that all game ideas became the property of Nintendo.  The winner had his idea turned into a real game... but I guess I did too... Again, no pay.  But I did get Honorable Mention, which was a year's subscription to Nintendo Power and boy - at 12 - I thought I was hot shit.

Well that's the story of part of my life.  That kind'a sucked.  I have writers block, I have candida, a bunch of rich bastards ripped me off.  If you just isolated that chunk it'd seem like I was a real downer and my life sucked balls... But you know what? I'm pretty happy with my life.  It's not everything I hoped and dreamed for, but it's not all that bad after all.  Now if I could just fall as