Yearly Archive: 2003

So one of my best and oldest friends (oldest as in how long we’ve been friends, not his age), Andy Hunter, will be moving to Austin, and even cooler, moving into an apartment one building away from mine. Very cool.

We lost my grandmother today. For those who might not know, it was totally expected. She had been in declining health for a long time, and living with my mother who had been taking care of her for many years now. She was constantly in and out of the hospital, and my mother had somehow managed to take care of her for a long time even though Mimi (as we knew her) was really far beyond the capabilities that should have been expected from my mom. Somehow my Supermom managed to make it work all this time though, even though Mimi really should have gone into some place where she would have been professionally cared for 24/7. The thought of any kind if “home” or anything was anathema to her though, so my mom bravely soldiered forward, living her life basically as a 24/7 home care nurse.
With this last trip to the hospital, it was pretty much determined that things were looking worse, and that these might be her final days. She had a “Living Will” and did not want to be kept alive by any machines or life support or any of that. In her final week she was moved to a Houston facility, and my mom, my 2 uncles, and their wives were pretty constantly down there with her. In her final days, the doctors had proposed various feeding tubes and procedures which really served no purpose but to delay the inevitable, so in the end all those procedures were declined, and instead, she was just put on oxygen and morphine to make her comfortable. That was yesterday. She died some time after noon today. I’m sure she was ecstatic to finally be out of her misery and to again be with my uncle Jim, who I’m sure was there to greet her with his guitar in hand at the boat dock, bus stop, train station, futuristic air tube, or whatever other transit there is to the after life.
My mother and I spent a large majority of my life living in the same house with Mimi, so she was a large part of my growing up too. A few random memories:
She introduced me to the delicacies of butter and sugar sandwiches, raw cookie dough (which I liked to eat as much as finished cookies), and can probably be blamed for my enduring sweet tooth.
She was responsible for exposing me to old horror films, Monty Python, and Benny Hill, which I’m sure played a large part in shaping me.
She obviously raised a damn good family too, since my mom and my uncles are all exemplary human beings.
Good bye, Mimi. Here’s some change for Charon, the bus driver, the train conductor, air tube coin slots, or whatever it may be. Say hello to Jim for me.

O.K., I know I’m not a dabbling hack, but that’s not the point. “What is the point?”, you may ask.
Lately, I’ve really been examining my career goals, and how to best approach them. I’ve always had many diverse talents and interests. In one way this is good in that I am very versatile, and there’s a lot of paths I could take. On the other hand, it also leads to confusion, and trying to juggle things, and risking that you may split yourself in too many directions.
Today, I realized just how scattered I am when I thought about all the things I’ve thought about pursuing. Let’s look, shall we? We all know of my acting, and music aspirations. You an divide music into further sub-categories such as writing, producing, session playing etc., although lately I’ve been wondering if I’m really good enough to be a session player. I’m not so sure about that. I’ve also been pursuing crew work as a production assistant on films, TV, commercials, and just about anything, really. I think that as far as crew work goes, my eventual goal would be to work into an Assistant Director capacity. When I did an infomercial not long ago, I really took note of Og, the A.D., and realized that’s a position in which I really thought I would excel.
I’ve thought about trying to get into film scoring a la Danny Elfman. This isn’t really feasible at the moment since I would need, at the very least, a really nice workstation keyboard. Something along the lines of a $3000+ keyboard with tons of sounds like having an orchestra at my fingertips. Even then I wondered if I could really do it without also reading and writing sheet music. I would really like to know more about Danny Elfman, and his exact process. I could record a film score and someone else could notate it I suppose. This is one of the most unknown avenues to me, and one of the least likely as a starting point. It would more likely be something I would get into after somewhat establishing my career in some other way first.
I’m also a writer. I think I’m quite a good one (not that this blog is any evidence of that). I’ve got a screenplay which is about 2/3 finished which I think is brilliant, and one of my best possibilities for getting somewhere. Unfortunately, I’m also very lazy and slow. I wrote the first half in like a month, and have spent the next 3 years, slowly trying to finish it. This has led me to various other thoughts (which are really way too far down the line to worry about right now, but that doesn’t stop me) such as should I just outright sell it if someone made me an offer, or should I hold out until I can get a deal to star and direct it too, which is really my vision, and how I think it needs to be done. Part of me thinks “if you actually get an offer at all, you’ve hit the lottery, so take it!”, while the other part thinks “Don’t compromise what you want. It is good enough that someone will agree to my terms, and that’s really the only way my vision will ever be fulfilled”. The first option compromises my dream for the sake of money and career advancement.
I’ve also thought that I could write reviews, or magazine articles quite well, but yet I have no portfolio or anything to convince anyone of that.
Many people have told me I should do stand-up comedy, which I’ve also though about. In fact I have a notebook of ideas that I’ve kept since like eighth grade, albeit only sporadically, to the tune of several pages. I’ve probably forgotten more brilliant things than I’ve documented. If I did take this route, it would only be as a stepping stone to other things since I don’t really want to be a touring stand-up comedian.
There’s probably many more I’m forgetting at the moment, but you get the idea. I’m happy, and blessed to have so many areas which I feel at least fairly confident in my talents, and while that gives me many avenues to pursue, and hopefully gives me more chances to make some money, it also confuses things.
A bit of a random tangent: my aunt says she knows someone who is a “Book Index Editor” who works from home on his own hours. How the hell do people get these kinds of jobs? I’d love to have any kind of job where I can work my own hours from home, at least for now!
The world is my burrito, I just don’t know what I want on it.