I: Emotion thief

It's rare that I capture myself in a really good mood on this blog, or even, as I am tonight, merely content with my life and glad for no real drastic reason. Most of the time I'm down, distraught, procrastinating, fraught with self-loathing, bored, tired, some combination. Tonight I'm groovy, and as I've barely been around SWP lately, and particularly given the mid-crisis tone of my previous entry, I owed it to myself and my readers to get this mood in text.

I wrote yesterday about certain issues I was having with my creativity. It happens a lot, that I'll catch myself in a moment of doubt and it'll all come exploding out. And that's not to say those feelings aren't valid to a degree. I'm entitled to fear about my creativity, because after all, it helps spur me on and try to conquer them. The trick is not to be paralyzed by them, and I haven't yet. Writers who aren't the least bit critical of their own work are usually shitty writers. Ask Chuck Austen, who was frequently defending his brilliance to anyone who would listen. By contrast, John Lennon hated a lot of what he wrote.

This is of course no affectation on my part, it's as legitimate as I get. It's gotten to the point where Manda usually threatens to start throwing things at me when I muse about how hard it was for me to be sure Half-Past was really funny (hint: it was, by popular consensus.)

Part of my problem, yesterday, was that I had written this thing and it overlapped with Half-Past in certain ways. Bryan left a fairly insightful comment on that entry where he noted "I don't think it's always a bad thing, if you're new play is seeming like you're old one, maybe in writing this new one you uncovered something you didn't have before." And to a certain degree he's right, because I took a different angle on the same situation, and it had validity on its own terms, to an extent.

My problem was that I had stuffed this similar story inside another, promising one that got short-shifted in favour of the repeat, and the repeat was stripped of a lot of the stuff that made Half-Past so intriguing and outrageous. I had done myself a disservice. It also isn't that funny. There are some laughs but there's nothing in there that would've knocked 'em dead. It was a bunt when I should've swung for the fences. I was worried that I'd found the limits of what I was capable of doing as a writer, and it scared me.

So I was agonizing over this, in my private creative hell. Cary and I were brainstorming ideas for ways I could reformat it, ways I could inject some of that Half-Past magic, the Billys and Nancys and of course Perry Robbins. And of course the go-to-phrase was "Make it two acts," which I was keen on, so long as I could come up with something intriguing for that first act. I had a starting point, although to a degree it would've seemed like the premise of Half-Past with different characters, so there's me looping back on myself again.

So I was on the train today, reading "Easy Riders, Raging Bulls" (a very engrossing read indeed, how I do love my nonfic) and my mind was drifting as it has a writerish tendency to do and suddenly like a sledgehammer against drywall I busted through this problem, I figured out how to tear the entire story down and rebuild it properly, not only so that the plot wouldn't be so meandering, but I would also be able to excise a greater volume of laughs.

Because you won't know what I'm talking about, I'll not outline the entire process for you, but essentially what I'm looking at doing is eliminating one (major) character, merging his story with an existing character (the one who was getting slighted, should've been the focus from the start,) and adding in the first character's opposite, who can be played for laughs.

It probably won't need the second act (or that is, it would be a new first act,) depending on how well I write this. I think a lengthy one-act might suffice. We'll see.

So when this all occurred to me, I felt a great deal of elation, that amazing, instant feeling you get when you know you've got something. The comedic possibilities were particularly exciting, because comedy is frigging hard.

I have a lot of insecurity about my ability to write comedy, because comedy is fickle. You can get an amused smirk or a chuckle out of a funny wording or an unexpected reaction. "Big laughs" take a lot of construction, or at least talent on the part of the performer. I credit so much of the laughter in Half-Past to the actors who were acting out things that seemed, a lot of the time, merely rather amusing to me on paper. Ryan Moran, who played Perry, was like a friggin' godsend. Not that that was a hard role to get laughs from, but he got pretty much all of them, and added his own.

Anyway, enough gushing. The day pretty much proceeded innocently from there, no stress, no complaints, a normal grocery shoppin' Tuesday. Although one of the shirts my dad brought back from out west for souvenirs was a girls' shirt, so... yeah.

I ordered a Halloween costume. It's funny, about Halloween. I usually had pretty crappy costumes as a kid. nothing elaborate but at least tailored to my interests. One year I was a ninja. One year, the Scream killer. Some years I just slapped on whatever random mask I could find. Mom was keen on homemade costumes and one year event attempted to gather materials for a homemade Spider-Man costume when I asked to be him. Once I realized what she was up to I nixed the idea in favour of, well, anything else, and quite frankly I can't remember what. But goddamnit I was not going to wear Biway hosiery for Spider-Man pants.

I've said too much.

Anyway. A few years ago, I went to Cary's ArtSci Halloween party, and had to basically improvise a costume, a pro bowler, an idea I'd already had years prior but never had an excuse to use. Given I already had the stuff, it wasn't too much of a stretch. The next year I went and gathered materials for a "Dude" Lebowski costume, which some got and some didn't.

This year, I actually spent some dough on it, a facsimile DHARMA jumpsuit, complete with Swan logo. I noticed a while back they were selling them on ABC.com for some ridiculous price, so I entertained the idea of buying one but decided it wasn't worth it. Then I found a decent-looking independently-made one on eBay (I did check the sizes) for about half the cost so I figured "Sure, what the hell." Eric joked that I could still use it afterward. Sure, if I wanna examine electromagnetic phenomena! Amirite?!

So I'm in high spirits. I just had a little brainstorming session with Cary, and things are looking good. now for reality to smash me back down to Earth...

Keep on rockin'
-Scotto

H: Beautiful and blunt

I had today off for Yom Kippur. I was hoping not to waste it, but I essentially did. It was a little inevitable, I even said so to Brandon yesterday, "I've got tomorrow off and I am just going to do nothing." I had a pretty good weekend, a productive one, even, since I finished off the first draft of this play I've been working on.

Like everything I write, I've got mixed feelings. Further complicating this is the fact, which I've acknowledged since the beginning, that it was an awful lot like Half-Past. There are a number of things about it that are distinct, but there is a certain thread of plot, which I allow to dominate probably more than I should, that is an awful lot like Mark's plight. Now, this is because I based the play on a couple stories I wrote a while back, when Half-Past was a non-entity anyway. In prose, it doesn't really read like a copy, but you put it on the stage and it's like a rerun.

It's frustrating. You write something like Half-Past and suddenly it looms large. This must be how Rivers Cuomo feels about Pinkerton. It doesn't help that a disproportionate amount of my body is made of self-loathing. I fancy myself a writer, but secretly I think of myself an asshole who has no idea what he's doing.

People tell me otherwise. I want to believe them, but I get so very easily frustrated with myself, with what I perceive as my limitations. The key to this script is in there, somewhere. A lot of the time I feel like I have no grasp of what comedy is and have no business attempting to write it. Somewhere the ghost of my 16-year-old self is kicking my ass.

Well, at least I've touched boobs. I've got that over him.

I'm agonizing over this shit because I know I'm better than it. I feel like I'm capable of good work and the truth is, my first drafts aren't bad, they just need... work. I keep toying with the idea of expanding out to two acts, but the idea of generating that much material is intimidating. Fuck me and my insecurity. I'm too serious. I can do this, I can do this, I can do this, I suck.

I wasn't having a bad weekend. Let's tie these two threads together for your enlightenment.

There's this movie, Night on Earth. Waaaay back when Eric was popping pills 24/7 (so glad we're able to laugh about that now) he would spend a lot of time watching movies On Demand (as he was not in school nor working and therefore had nothing better to do) and he happened across a film by Jim Jarmusch, entitled Night on Earth. Now, for whatever reason, out of all the movies he ever randomly discovered, this was the only one he ever felt the need to share with me, and one day we sat down and watched it.

The movie is comprised of five unrelated segments set at night in taxicabs in five different cities -- Los Angeles, New York, Paris, Rome and Helsinki. They are, in turns, funny, deep, provocative, strange, tragic... sometimes at once. It begins with sunset in LA and ends with sunrise in Helsinki. I had only seen it the one time, but it made an impact on me for a long time afterward, and a lot of what I've written since has been influenced by it, my attempt to recreate the feelings it stirred up in me.

Anyway. They were doing a Free Friday screening of it at Innis on Friday. I had always meant to come to a Friday film at Innis, ever since first year, but I always felt it wasn't worth coming down for. But since Eric and I were so attached to this film, I decided to go and invite him along.

So we met up at St. George station in time for the film. It was very enjoyable, even better than I remembered. We grabbed a drink afterward and caught up on stuff. It was a good night and we agreed we should do it again sometime.

A few beers deep, I was falling asleep on the last GO train, which had left late anyway.

Butanyway. Saturday was uneventful. Coffee with Manda as usual, as she described certain measures that were approaching to help improve her work situation. I had intended to go see the show at Mac, on Cary's recommendations, but my inability to properly plan anything got the better of me, so things didn't work out and I ended up hanging around the house catching up on reading Easy Riders, Raging Bulls, which I'd borrowed from Martina. It's a pretty interesting book, although it's large about who was fucking who and snorting what, it's still insightful enough about the politics behind 70's filmmaking. Then I watched the season premiere of SNL. Bleh.

Sunday, aunt Lori's birthday, which means several solid hours of hauling kids around. This family is lucky I'm still young and vital enough to put up with the offspring. I'm a tough kid, accustomed to roughhousing, used to abuse. Yeah, it's tiring, more to be begged for attention than to actually be giving it, but I get on with my life.

I went home last night, watched Curb Your Enthusiasm and Entourage, then finished off that script. That brings us to today, a day that began with Vasa texting me to say she had some time to hang out, and me saying I wasn't gonna be in Toronto today. She's real keen to hang out, yet she has so many demands on her time that it's hard to reconcile with my commuting.

In the course of composing this entry, I've talked with Cary a bit. A lot of the angst that I wrote at the beginning has subsided as I've brainstormed some ways to bust through these problems and attempt to rehabilitate my sense of self-value. I guess we'll see how it works out once I complete this next draft. Well, now I feel slightly better-prepared to handle it.

It's like... I don't wanna be Seth MacFarlane, with all the talking babies and animals. Family Guy had that sheen of originality when it debuted, and then a few years later we had American Dad with it's Paul Lynde alien and German goldfish, and now the Cleveland Show with its jive playah baby and vaguely Eurotrash talking bear. What a load of shit! No transexual mobsters in the new play. Instead, I'm leaning toward time-traveling robot hunter. It's just crazy enough to work.

Am I fucking with you? We'll have to tune in in 2010 to find out.

Keep on rockin'
-Scotto

G: A place for thinking

I'm thinking about growing a mustache. It would make me look so amazingly smug. Nobody wears mustaches anymore, it'd be a gag. People would see me and wonder "What is that guy's deal?"

We've all had those days where you get home, flop down, and sigh, "It's been such a day." It's just a little more noticeable that your usual day-end fatigue. Usual day-end fatigue, I used to get in high school, and I'd come home and Eric would do one of the many things he used to annoy me with -- to my astonishment and delight I can no longer remember exactly what they were -- and when I'd snap at him he'd assume I'd had one of those days. Of course, this was back when he was a drop-out, so he didn't remember how exhausting simply being up and out in the world could be. He probably has a better understanding of where I was coming from now.

It's weird to think it will never be like that again. I don't know about anyone else, but part of me always expects the past to be the future. "When Eric comes back." "The next time I'm in high school." "When I'm in kindergarten again." Weird. Sometimes my mind uses the past too literally as a framework for the future.

I've digressed a lot already. My original point is that every day so far this week has felt like that. I've felt really down about a lot of things -- little things, things you'd think wouldn't bother me, things that shouldn't seem so bad. My place in life, the future, abstract shit like that. I'm a worrier. I'm a very nonchalant guy a lot of the time, but also a worrier, and when that shit gets unleashed, well, just ask Manda. Actually don't. It's embarrassing. She has one really good story about me from a time at Sheridan when I was super-stressed. I expressed it a lot more back then, nowadays I mainly internalize it. I'm not sure if that means I'm actually feeling it less, it's hard to tell because it's all in my mind and I can't really trust a lot of what goes on in there anyway.

Anyway. I could mope a lot about all the things that are bringing me down. And believe me, I want to, and I would be within my rights because this is SWP after all. But I'm a just really tired. Tired of thinking about it. I unleashed a lot of it on Julie. She seemed sympathetic, and that's all I wanted anyway. I guess I wasn't looking for a solution. Per se.

I'm just a very internal person. It's hard to draw me out. Someone recently suggested I join a club or get involved with activities at school, and I could, but the idea doesn't super-appeal to me for some reason, probably because, given my situation, I just view it as a hassle.

I have this friend. Ever since I knew her, it seemed like she was searching for something. That one thing that would complete her life. She went through mercurial phases of interests and hobbies but always seemed very restless. A few years ago, she found her thing. I know, or at least I believe so, because she has been with it for several years, it is the main structure of her social life, and whenever she talks about it she gets this very profound fondness in her voice.

I have my projects. They don't get me out of the house much, although there was Half-Past, which still didn't get me out of the house as much as I'd have liked it to. For the most part I like doing my things. Doing new things will take away from that. But at least it will get me out of the house and meeting new people.

Internal conflictz0rz.

Really, what it comes down to is what I've been saying all along, that my greatest enemy in life is myself. My over-analytical, skeptical, unable to seek self-enjoyment, overly practical and pragmatic self.

And of course, at the end of the day, it's really just a sex thing anyway.

Keep on rockin'
-Scott

F: No longer human

I must be a glutton for punishment.

I got ill pulling a risky (and by risky, I mean simply foolish) stunt biking home from the GO station Thursday night. I woke up Friday morning and my nose was running like a faucet. I've seen fit to take the appropriate measures, mixing ColdFX (which I believe in) and day/night cold pills so I don't really know where the wellness is coming from and to what degree it will be permanent.

Add to that mix the fact that, when sick, I tend to go about my business as much as I can to the degree that I had a beer last night, and am indulging in caffeine, which I inevitably will be combining with some nighttime cold pills which I should be careful about, since I think that's what killed Heath Ledger (it's not.)

Speaking of the late Ledger, I saw the trailer for the new Terry Gilliam movie he was shooting when he died. His role was reconfigured to where he transforms repeatedly throughout the film into Johnny Depp, Jude Law and Colin Farrell. How, I asked my brother, can one man be Australian, American, British and Irish?? How! His answer, of course, "In this day and age, how can he not?" true enough, even if he had no idea what I was talking about when I said it, as I hadn't referenced the film to him yet and simply began the conversation with that question. Though he was the one who showed it to me. Anyway it looks cool.

Well, it was a lonely, quiet, sniffling, headachey Saturday night. I got some work done, but the whole "being sick/pretending not to be sick/watching Scrubs" thing got in the way. Finished off a page, though so... go me? Arg. Once again I'm my own enemy.

Seems as though I'll have a number of these Saturday nights ahead of me. It will either be terrifically productive, or crushingly depressing. Could be both. We'll see! Won't that be fun?

I do my best. Anyhow.

Keep on rockin'
-Scotto

E: What makes you think it's over?

So I've made it through yet another installment in this 13-part series we call first semester.

As is likely to become habit, I left class early today. It was a rather enlightening lecture on the Tell-Tale Heart, which I read back in grade 7 and have only the faintest memory of. In fact I'm not entirely sure whether I read that, the Black Cat, or both. I left at the half (~7:30) before she could dig into Fall of the House of Usher, because as helpful as that would have been, my will to get home before 11 was far stronger.

I actually rather like this prof's lecturing, despite some initial uncertainty. No maybe not my favourite ever, but I'm not leaving early because I am bored with hearing her talk. Nothing especially exciting, mind you, but good enough to take. I liked Rayter's 6-9 class because not only did I find him an exceptionally good lecturer, that even when I wasn't that into the material I liked hearing him talk about it, but he also had an endearing tendency to end his classes early, making it pointless to sneak out early because except in rare cases I was able to catch the 8:43 train home. I liked Kuhn, but it didn't stop me from stepping out of his class early most of the time.

In no particular order my favourite profs at U of T have been Reibetanz, Rayter, Kuhn, Kiel, King, Cobb. Ackerman, my Drama prof this semester, and leading candidate for that list, is a lot like Cobb, who I wasn't sure if I ought to include. And Mackenzie isn't as much of a horror as people claimed he'd be. Not so far anyhow.

I skipped my 6-9 class last night so I could get to the supermarket in Oakville before it closed. Is that weird? Yeah it's weird, but such things happen. I'm weird and I do weird things.

Today wasn't much of a day anyhow. I got up, I hung around the house a while and left at such-a-time that I'd get to Toronto an earlier than I needed just so I could hang around a while in a different location. In film we watched MASH or M*A*S*H although it's an acronym so I guess the asterisks are supposed to be periods which would make it M*A*S*H* which doesn't look right at all. It stands for Mobile Army Surgical Hospital in case you're culturally impaired. It was made into a sitcom starring Alan Alda, that guy who turns up in things and you sometimes wonder "What's the guy from?" It's M*A*S*H. He was the guy from M*A*S*H.

The original movie was directed by Robert Altman, who directed a number of great films you and I haven't either of us seen. Well, you maybe saw Short Cuts, but I haven't. But I doubt you saw Prairie Home Companion. nobody saw Prairie Home Companion, except the people who were in Prairie Home Companion, which was everybody. Paradox.

I was talking to my friend Victoria, a girl I met outside that very classroom (Innis Town Hall, home base for all film majors) a year and a half ago, sometime toward the end of our first year. After reading week, I guess. It's become disturbingly clear over the years how bad my habit of picking up casual female platonic acquaintances has gotten. In most classes I have one, sometimes two, although some are holdovers. Consider Daron (a girl with a boy's name) whom I met in Shakespeare and now have Drama with (the class, not the concept.) In Shakespeare, I hung out with Claire, whom I met in Poetry, where I was really mainly friends with Jasmin. In short, what the fuck is wrong with me? I take this to be the status quo and my dick decided long ago that actually getting laid is not a really high priority, so I meet women and forget to ask them out ever. Usually because I get to know them and lose interest in anything more than polite acquaintanceship. Don't ask why, it's not because they're unappealing. It's because I'm both too lazy to take the risk and because I know I'll meet another girl sooner or later anyway. It's a process that keeps repeating. What the fuck, Scott. You're the source of your own problem. You know how to break the ice, but you don't actually know what to do after that.

Unless you are drinking.

Solution: I should come to class drunk more.

Anyway, the entire purpose of me mentioning Victoria was to give myself a reason to get onto that tangent because it hit me when I was on the train and it sat in my brain waiting to be released in SWP form, so you're welcome. Or rather, my condolences, if you're reading this.

I don't intend on trying to cure this problem here. I'm not even entirely sure it is a problem. There was a time when I was utterly and totally intimidated by women, even the girls who were my friends. At some point I got over it, possibly out of pure necessity. i have no idea when or how, but by the end of grade 12 I left that particular quirk behind.

I dunno. I've been thinking about it after yesterday, I ran into one of these girls in the library and there was one of those innocuous little moments I tend to over-analyze in my head. I'm more prone to those things the prettier I find the girl. Just because I don't get paralyzed with awkwardness doesn't mean I deal with it any better. Not that I obsess like I did back in the day, but you know. Or maybe you don't.

Well you should know by now, if you've been reading since the beginning of this entry, that I'm pretty insane. Let alone previous entries. Let alone!

I don't wanna know what the future holds. I'd rather just allow the present to wash over me and make sure I learn from the past (hint: I haven't yet.)

Keep on rockin'
-Scotto

D: Dragon's dare

Did you ever have one of those nights where you just didn't feel like doing anything, anything at all?

Of course you did. I'm in the habit of phrasing things as questions when I'm really just trying to relate my own experience. I've got projects. I've got a lot of little things buzzing around in my head all day when I am supposed to be thinking about school, or other theoretically important things. I get home at the end of a long day and I do not feel like addressing them because I'm tired now and there will be time tomorrow. But I'll be tired tomorrow too. Conundrumz.

I'm a huge procrastinator and my various projects are just more things to procrastinate with, then I accumulate more projects to procrastinate with and it's a self-repeating cycle. Occasionally I actually accomplish something. Every so often I finish off a comic strip, although the fact that it takes about a year for a 30-odd page chapter of Regular Guy to get done shows you exactly how dedicated I've been lately. Used to be I could crank out a few Sewerman comics a year. By the end I tapered off into the current trend, but as I recall way back at the beginning -- which would be 2001, when I started drawing RN Comics -- I think I did three and a half comics between spring, when I started the first Sensational 7, and the end of the year, when I was probably still working on Sewerman #3. The last one was published in 2005 so I think we did about two per year after that. The math is hazy.

I was thinking earlier. Did I keep projects because I had no social life, or did I have no social life because I was working on the projects? It's kind of a chicken-and-egg thing, and neither option is especially appealing. I'll never be able to satisfactorily answer the question myself although I remember the exact moment my life started down that solitary path of scribbling badly-proportioned superheroes on 8.5x11" printer paper in my basement; when I was in grade 6 or so, as my friendship with my best friend was deteriorating (he was becoming more of a jock and I was, well, not,) he came by my house to see if I wanted to hang out, and I turned him down because I was doing something-or-other in my basement. It was probably porn.

Anyway. I'm not saying that my entire life was defined by this moment. I probably could've gone and hung out with him and then it would've happened all over again at some later point. Maybe I don't believe in destiny, but I do believe in things taking their inevitable conclusions. It's too complicated for me to be able to bother trying to explain or even understand for myself, other than that I just said it.

So I got home today after my one hour of class (never having enough change to actually take the bus, I walk home from the GO station) and I thought "Hey, nothing on TV tonight, maybe I'll do some writing." Then I realized I had to go to dad's and do groceries and by the time I got back from that, despite technically having plenty of time, I was sapped of motivation.

Motivation's a funny thing. So intangible. I want to do these things, and yet I want not to be doing them and so I'm not. I have no reason to believe doing them would be unenjoyable, it's just... not in the cards. I did a bit of drawing earlier, finished up a page that had lingered half-done for weeks but I want to get the next one done before I post it, maybe the one after it too. Buffering is a webcomic art.

My dream is for stuff I write to get a page on TV Tropes where people can deconstruct all the conventions I adhere to or subvert or avoid. I think for the most part the entries on things like Sewerman and Regular Guy would be relatively uninteresting, although sometimes (often) people see things you (the creator) do not.

That's the funny thing about putting something out in the world. when it's a script or an idea, it's yours. But by the time it reaches people, it's theirs to do with and interpret as they please, no matter how much the creator hates that (and oftentimes they do.) That's the entire point of art and entertainment. It's for the people. Eric and I once had a weirdly impassioned argument (well, discussion, or debate) because I was putting these little spiels under my comic pages and he argued that it detracted from the purity of the art (the thing speaks for itself, as it were.) For the most part I wrote things like "I don't think I did a good job writing this page" or "I like jokes about this subject." This is fairly common practice amongst webcomics to the point where it is actually dreadful in some cases.

The author of one webcomic I read has a chronic need to overexplain things that are going on in his comic because of his love of fantastical science and magic (which operates with strict scientific rules in his universe) so he goes over everything he already struggles to really capture in his exposition. And yet I read it.

It's weird. I'm not happy with myself for continuing to read it, although at this point I've put in a lot of time into reading it, and I don't hate it it's just a chore to read. The author has some peculiar proclivities but his characters are often endearing and sometimes he manages to write a joke properly... it's no QC.

This has been a peculiar rant. Interestingly unfocused. Sometimes it's very intriguing to see where your mind takes you when you unchain it. I didn't really sit down with the intention to write anything in particular tonight, although that business about my best friend in grade 6 did occur to me earlier when I was emptying the dishwasher, so six of one and whatnot.

Anyway, maybe tomorrow I'll have something to say about my actual life, or at the very least I'll get around to that stuff I've been putting off.

Keep on rockin'
-Scotto

C: Magic Masks

I've been tripping back and forth all week on whether I think my life totally sucks or if it's just livable or if it's actually pretty good. The first and last options are pretty unlikely. Everyone's life has its downer moments. Heaven forbid I should get a fatal disease, you poor people would never hear the end of it.

Well, I suppose eventually you would. AND THEN YOU'D BE SORRY!!

Anyway. School began on Wednesday. There's nothing to get you thinking and panicking about the future like the first week of school. And it happened every goddamn year. I'm totally powerless against it. Just this major shift in routine and all the new faces and the time of year gets to me. I don't wanna talk about the actual week. It was in some ways notable and I'll get to it later but I wanna talk about stuff that could be talked about at any time previous to this or afterward, but I'm gonna talk about it now because now is when I am thinking about it.

Fall. When I think of the fall, and the beginning of the school year, my mind usually puts me back in one of two places and I don't really know why these particular places but by gum they stick out. Obviously in both cases it's that crispy-chilly September/October feeling that accompanies the new school year. One is the beginning of Grade 10. Grade 10 was a pretty bad year just based on the principal that all my high school years were pretty rough on a sliding scale and everyone's high school years suck (and if someday you consider your high school years to have been the best, your life has officially sucked.) So there's me in grade 10, still an awkward teenager (I am now an awkward 20-something.) Still trying to figure out where I belong in the grand scheme of the high school universe. My inherited grade school friendships were starting to run out of gas as our interests started to diverge (the people I was friends with were not bad people, but they were not meant to be my friends.) I had bought my dad the Beatles 1962-1966 greatest hits set for his birthday, and proceeded to borrow it and listen to it repeatedly. This was the beginning of my rediscovery of the Beatles forming the foundation of my long-running fixation on them. One time I listened to Eleanor Rigby -- I am sure it was not the first time in my entire life I had heard the song, because I remember hearing it and feeling like it had been buried deep within my subconscious for years (after all, the radio was mainly tuned to Oldies Radio 1050 Chum when I was a kid but I was not as observant then.) And the phrase "All the lonely people" just hit me deep. Motherfucker, Paul McCartney.

(Perhaps the supreme irony of my writing of my love for the Beatles right now is that instead of actually listening to them as I compose my thoughts, I am listening to a certain mid-90's British girl pop group. Stand in awe of my super-masculinity.)

So there's me in first semester of Grade 10, taking classes that would continue to affect me throughout my life as a student at White Oaks -- my early CommTech adventures, Food School, and of course grade 10 drama which is where I was introduced to a lot of people that would remain in my life to this day, primarily CB and Cary, although I wasn't friends with them, not for a very, very long time. Also, Emma and Vanessa Brown. And in CommTech, Kyle and Josh. Oh Kyle and Josh.

I don't know. I was a helpless kid in a big black coat and I'm glad that that level of awkwardness is behind me, at least I assume it is. For all the awkwardness I exude these days, I am far, far better now than I was then. I am now the person I secretly hoped to be in my head in grade 10. Now if only I could become the person I secretly am in my head now.

The other year is the sequel to that year, Grade 12. Oddly enough, skipping over grade 11. Grade 11 is a harder year to grab ahold of because stuff was going on that seems like a deviation from what the story ultimately turned out to be. Kris living with us that year. Randi. Actually being friends with Josh. That year was sort of an extended tangent.

Grade 12 is where my mind immediately goes because of Earnest, and the shock of learning I was actually developing, you know, social skills. This is largely discussed in actual entries from the time. Actually developing a social life was a long and painful process. And I documented that shit.

I don't think it qualifies as nostalgia if I acknowledge that times were pretty shitty. Like I said, apart from maybe the last semester, I had a pretty textbook example of "shitty high school experience." I don't mean to carp on it, but fall does that to me. Every single year.

You're gonna read this entry again a year from now. I'll be re-writing it.

I can't really remember the early parts of Sheridan (it was all terribly confusing in first year, and it was very busy in second year.) My memory had never been exemplary which is why I am so keen on keeping up SWP, because someday I'll wanna know what things were like in 2009, or 2005 or 2004. Any earlier and I'm SOL, and that's probably for the best because as I mentioned once or twice they were not good years (although maybe they might've been better if I'd had this thing to write in, but probably not.)

Every year begins at U of T on a similar note. New big imposing buildings, new anonymous crowds, mostly full of people I will never speak to. I've got some friends in my American Cinema class. Martina. Some other folks I don't know properly by name, which is a shame but I'll learn. I'll have to learn.

The first class I got to was a Modern Drama to WWII (Wilde, Brecht, Shaw.) Almost entirely female, which of course is par for the course and I should totally be used to it as an English major. There will be acting (I imagined it was possible) but only a smidge. The prof seems like a pretty cool dude. Enthusiastic. His name's Ackerman, he's giving us Yom Kippur off. No complaints.

Second one was the first of a couple "OH GOD WHY I have to drop this nowww" classes. Literary Theory. Of course, given it's a requirement, I will not in fact be dropping it. The prof talks/acts like John Malkovich on uppers and the class is (ostensibly) from 6-9 on Wednesday night. It's a good thing this is only a half-cred, so I won't have to worry about missing Lost. I would not miss Lost for this crap.

The next day was American Pop Film Since the 70's, my only full-credit course which, along with North American Pop Music next semester, comprises my "Wait I'm paying for this education?" tour. Be glad I have avoided taking The Graphic Novel (advance word is that class sucks.) We watched a crappy Peter Fonda flick called "The Last Movie" as an example of overindulgent art-cinema at the dawn on New Hollywood. Despite some of his reputation, the prof, Mackenzie, seemed like a likable, affable dude. I suspect some of the negativity comes from Film Theory being a drag anyway.

I mean, maybe he's no Rob King or Charlie Kiel (described by Adam "Nay" Nayman as "the best.") But I feel like I could take him for the year.

From there, it was dashing down to Sid Smith where I came to a massive, already-in-progress lecture on Baudelaire ('s thoughts on Poe) that made me wonder whether I'd stumbled into the middle of something before confirming with a classmate that this was, in fact, the Short Story collection. For a lot of the class I felt as though I was destined to drop this class in favour of The Novel (Dr. S. Rayter whaaat.) but then I got a look at the workload. Sigh of love.

The key to all my classes this year, most particularly Short Story Collection and Theory, is that they are not loaded with giant 12-pages essays. They don't lack papers. You can't be an English major (or really study much of anything) without a certain amount of writing. But it's the nature and extent of that writing that gets you. I had so many godforsaken papers to handle at the end of last year I had barely any cognition of what I was actually doing, and it showed. I've stumbled into some accidental brilliance with some of these classes. Getting off light, as I explained to Manda when I saw her on Saturday.

For the record, I have Fridays off, so it shakes out that I have light duties on Monday and Tuesday, giant heavy stuff on Wed and Thurs, then freedom Fridays. I can live with that. I mean, I'll probably skip half of those Short Story Collection sessions (by that I mean, the last hour, skipping out at the break, that sort of thing.) I liked Kuhn a lot but it didn't stop me from doing that with his class. I have my limits. I am prepared to pay the price.

That last sentence always seems to be my undoing.

So I was hanging out with Manda on Saturday. Nothing particularly interesting transpired although we discussed in greater-than-average detail my prospects for the future, as well as hers given that she's likely to be unemployed by the end of September (although that's been the line for a while now.) I decided I would be fine filing Obits for the Star or something. Or teaching English in Thailand or South Korea or whatever I need to do. See, I discovered a long time back - yet remain powerless against - the fact that to me, everything seems to be connected. My inability to succeed with women is connected to my struggles at school is connected to my inability to move out is connected to a bleak future where I fail at writing and am mopping up overflowing toilets. In times like that it helps for me to brainstorm things I might actually be able to do when I'm done with school (being done with school itself a terrifying prospect.) The fact that I know Kyle Chapman and he did the Thailand/Laos/English thing makes it seem possible and real. That fact also makes me wonder why I bothered going to school rather than just going and doing it like he did (rhetorical question, there are reasons.)

ANYWAY.

I was glad/dismayed to see a familiar face at HMV, a girl I temped with. Nice gal, we got along well, but her being there means she was hired and I was not. Of course, she's not in school or anything so I console myself saying that was the reason. HMV, sadly, has ruined me for other employers. I must have that job.

Today I went out to Toronto to see Joe and Viki play some music at Starbucks. I tried to get some of my Toronto friends out to see, but the ones I did get around to asking were unavailable. This whole "being social" thing is hard. They started late, at like 2:30, so I left early, about 10 after 4, to catch my train. It was a good set, nothing too unusual other than some different covers from Viki. They play good music, or occasionally bad music well (Viki does an Our Lady Peace cover. It's one of their less offensive examples but still, OLP. Clumsy.) Some of Joe's other friends were also there.

I pitched Joe an idea I had for a play incorporating his music. He seemed game, so now I just need to get through the whole business of "actually writing the damn thing," which I will do after I finish this one play that I am working on. Had a good long session on Saturday night. Then I realized one of the characters I introduced was completely useless, even obstructive to the plot, so I need to snip him out. Which will leave a bit of a gap, but nothing I can't wallpaper.

The hint was when I brought him back onstage and literally could not think of a damn thing for him to say, in a play that is already destined to be overpopulated with subplots and dialogue.

It's based on a few short stories I wrote, woven together. Well, two I wrote and one I wrote down a summary for as a framing device. It incorporates my usual themes of lost love and regret and concern about the future.

It's like Half-Past's evil cousin. Like the one from Bewitched. Or Sabrina.

I should end this entry. I was supposed to do other stuff tonight but fuck that. I'm my own man. Not to mention I don't know what would've happened if I went another day without an entry. Christ, do you remember when I got home every night and wrote on SWP? Much to Eric's annoyance, of course.

Tappa tappa tappa.

Keep on rockin'
-Scotto

B: The changing face of history

Before much longer it will officially be September 9th, the first day of school.

I feel like I should be having an existential crisis, and I kind of am, but it's the usual boring one.

I attempted to write an entry on Saturday night. I was feeling very bored and alone and I was probably very justified in all those feelings but I couldn't find any interesting way to express them at the time. Ultimately I am a very bored and lonely person. This causes me to overthink things, and my favourite topic to overthink is how crappy my life is. Before long, I'll be back in the classroom dealing with tactile problems like doing readings and writing papers and will have less and less time for circuitous existential quandaries. This can only be a good thing.

I owe myself a lot more focus, which an abundance of free time has enabled me to squander. "Oh, I think I will write a new play wait I also want to be doing a webcomic but I also still do e-feds and comic reviews and that Marten-Sven QC Slashfic isn't going to write itself." Okay, so I made that last one up. I'm sure some very dedicated perverts have already got that genre covered.

So yeah. I was bummed Saturday night. I feel like I have a certain license to spend a certain amount of my life bummed for no real good reason seeing as how my life kinda sucks in general. I mean, I don't hate it, I have no real angst, I'm just not in a good situation. I'm underachieving. Certain friends are having excessive amounts of success with women. (Certain female friends are having excessively pleasant relationships and typically irksome relationship problems that don't really sound like problems. Not you, Manda, you're not reading this anyway. I'll tell you later.)

And I heard about it, because that's what I do. I soak in other peoples' stories because I need to know how things really are for other people, since I am not living it myself, so I can maybe use it for writing. Poetry, I've decided, is the worst artform because it is so mind-numbingly personal, and all things being equal, writing about oneself is boring (SWP is boring.) When you're a poet, and your prime subject is yourself, your life, things you do, your poetry is unimaginative and tedious. Yes, the writer exists in everything he writes, but the autobiographical impulse has led many a writer into bland nothingness. Rayter once said, in a quote that has rung in my ears ever since, "Just because it really happened, doesn't mean it's good writing."

So the answer when people asked whether Half-Past was autobiographical was, of course, "No." Actually, I always said I was Beth, but I was joking/lying. There's not a damn thing in that play that can be said to have actually happened (to me, or probably to anyone else,) and it is almost certainly better for it. Whether or not it is bad writing nonetheless, that's not for me to judge.

Anyway. Sunday night I went over to Cary's. He was in Oakville for a big family thing, and had a very typical "in Oakville, bored" MSN status so I offered my hangout services. He, his brother and I ended up playing Super Mario World for a few hours before Chris ended up going to bed and then Cary and I watched "Half-Ton Dad" and "Half-Ton Teen" on TLC, which prompted a great deal of commentary given that they were advertising The Ultimate Cake-Off in the bottom corner of this show about super-obesity. TLC 1, sense of appropriateness 0.

Anyway, the whole thing made me feel pretty pleased with myself being the scrawny ass I am.

Monday, the new boarder moved in. The show has a new castmember, not that I ever interact with the boarders much, although I want to be friendly. That said, she's a cute 18-year-old girl, and we all know what being friendly implies. Apparently her dad told my mom she was not to have boys over, which amused my mom as she is not a friggin' babysitter. It amused me, because, well, I feel like the fox in the henhouse now.

Today I went down to Sheridan to hang out with Joe, on a whim since I'd left the house for coffee when I realized he might be around and by an astonishing coincidence he was. Meanwhile, I also ran into Steph, Mary Lynn, and Mitro~~*, who was eager to talk WWE and UFC, although he knows even fewer names than I do (We talked abut Brock Lesnar and Frank Mir, and he mythologized a Ken Shamrock/Royce Gracie encounter without knowing Gracie's name.) Joe and I talked about the usual stuff, life, school, work, movies, music/songwriting etc etc. He has a show coming up at a Toronto Starbucks. You should come.

Nothing else interesting happened today. I realized I've lost a lot of my ability at Guitar Hero and have little desire in rebuilding it, except that the Beatles Rock Band game is coming out. So I'll play that.

School tomorrow la la la, keep on rockin'
-Scotto

A: Queen of the Beautiful Monsters

Everything is a story.

I haven't shaved in a while. I "accidentally" (through inaction and neglect) re-grew my beard from last year.

I didn't say everything was an interesting story.

I had this nightmare last night. It started with me winning a few hundred bucks in the lottery - nice start - and then suddenly I heard all these low humming noises (which I later discerned were from the kitchen dishwasher, but this is dream-logic) and I interpreted them as being alien monsters. So I found myself living through the Steven Spielberg version of War of the Worlds. There are therefore two layers to that nightmare - one, in which I am being chased by scary aliens, and the other in which I am trapped in one of Spielberg's shittiest movies.

I mean, really. I hated that movie. It doesn't help that Wells' original story is based on a kind of biological deus ex machina, at least the original 50's film built up that concept a little bit so it didn't come out of nowhere. Christ, the end of Mars Attacks made more sense than the Spielberg War of the Worlds. He spent so much time injecting the movie with parental angst and go-nowhere theatrics that he forgot to include a plot. The aliens in that movie were basically from the school of "We have no true objective, but let's find some interesting and gruesome ways to wage an impromptu invasion, which we were smart enough to organize eons in advance without realizing they might have microbes for which we are not vaccinated!" Dumbass aliens. Mars Attacks again -- they were smart enough to wear fucking helmets. God damn. Spielberg has two Oscars, and Burton was making a movie based on a set of cartoon trading cards.

I do, however, have a pleasant memory of the first time I saw it. I was sitting next to a girl I was rapidly becoming aware was into me, and we spent the entire movie being whispery assholes making snarky comments to each other.

(sigh)

Hey look, it's September!

Not a lot interesting going on lately, of course. I guess next week I'm going back to school and all that. Not terribly interesting stuff. Mom successfully rented out the room. Apparently she made the girl (hurray?) aware that we have a dog that is old and prone to pooping around, and she didn't seem to mind, so hurray for student-borne desperation for a place to live.

I would've thought I had more to say but honestly, it's all same ole from me lately. I think I'll cut it now.

Keep on rockin'
-Scotto