Home with Parker

I’m at home with a sick Parker (age 4). We’re watching videos about flights to the moon.

I asked Parker if he is going to be an astronaut when he grows up and go to the moon. He said no. I asked him what he is going to be. He said a teacher.

Then he asked me what I’m going to be when I grow up. I said I don’t know.

Random Question #48

For what or when are you homesick?

Random Question #47

At what age were you most creative?

Random Question #46

When was the last time you surprised yourself?

I Thought I Saw You

It was 2006 or 2007. I was leaving work, pulling my car onto Flower Street, when you zipped by right in front of me on your bike. I had to brake to miss you. I could have sworn it was you. But what would you be doing – at our age – zipping a bike through downtown L.A.? 3,000 miles and 20 years away from home? We made eye contact and you disappeared behind parked cars. I know it was you – you gave me that look. It was 1987 you, the last time I saw you. But it was you.

Are you even still alive? Google won’t tell me.

Last night I had this dream. My two sons (age 9 and age 4) and I had broken into your house. And you were pulling into your driveway and we were desperately trying to get out before you could get inside. But we couldn’t find our way out. You were putting your key in the door and we had to hide from you and get out before you could discover us. You try doing this with the 4-year old whose idea of playing hide and seek is yelling out where he is as soon as you stop counting so you can find him. Terrified of never being found again.

Somehow we made it out and walked past on the sidewalk just as you went inside. But you knew. You knew. You glanced backward and gave me that look again. That look like you knew something I didn’t.

My dad was in the military when I grew up so we moved around. Not nearly as much as some do, but I changed schools a few times. Different states. It’s rough when you’re a kid, but one huge thing I learned was how to come into a new situation and figure it out immediately. Intuitively. The politics, the dynamics of the relationships, all that. Every time we moved my parents told me not to be sad about the friends I left behind, but instead to just go to school and make new ones. I got practice at this – I got good at it. Figuring out who to be friends with and who not to. But there was one thing I never learned.

When my dad would come home from work and tell us we were moving again, we would be devastated. We would cry, we’ll never see our friends again, all that. But you learn to put that aside because it hurts too much. You learn to figure out the place you’re moving to, not to dwell on the one you just left. You learn to forget your old friends. But I never learned how to say goodbye – it hurt too much. Terrified of never being found again. So I never have.

So I never did.

Are you still alive? I saw you. Are you a ghost? I see ghosts. Different states. I see dead people. I saw you. Sometimes it feels like I can’t see alive people anymore.

Definition of Insanity

They say the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over while expecting a different result. But they also say “if at first you don’t succeed, try try again.” So what do they know?

Look, you’re not going to get lucky. Nobody does. Whatever it is you’re trying to do, you need two things to succeed: a great idea and the skillful execution of that idea. One without the other isn’t enough. Where do you get these ingredients? The short answer is this: trial and error.

You try and try, over and over, discarding the weak ideas and refining your execution, going through your process. Always hoping for a different result this time.

Sometimes – too many times – you get one without the other. On the one extreme you have the killer idea that goes nowhere. On the other there’s the immaculately-polished turd.

How do you get past these? You work through them, all the way, as deeply and as completely as you can, then throw them away and keep going. Keep driving. Keep moving. Send your stuff out if you’re happy with it, but move on. The clock is ticking and you still need more practice. 

There’s a saying in the writers room: “You’ve got to kill your babies.” Harsh? Definitely. And that’s the point.

You’ve got to be willing to throw away everything, even the ideas you’re most in love with. Especially the ideas you’re most in love with. You’ve got to keep cranking. You’ve got to keep yourself honest. You can’t hang on to anything that can slow you down, that can keep you from moving forward, from driving the process along. Hanging on to one idea is just going to keep you pinned down and preoccupied when the next idea – a better idea – comes along.

When I think about creative people who have been successful, their success has almost always come from a steady progression of projects through which they’ve practiced and improved and reached a critical command of their skills. Then at some point that key idea comes along, and BAM! the idea gets executed with these skills and the rest is history. It is rare to hear of a creative person coming across his killer idea at age 19 or 23 or something and then spending years sheltering and nurturing and protecting that same idea until a miracle happens and the skills of execution arise out of nowhere. 

But you see people – talented people – clinging forever to that one thing. That one pet idea. For years, wasting time. And it breaks your heart. Forget about doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result – these people do NOTHING and expect a perfect result. Now that’s a definition of insanity. 

These skills are learned. You have to earn them, from stretching. From work. Not from babying that same idea you’ve held onto forever. In love with your idea? Terrific. Now go write that idea. Then write another one. Just do it. Kill your babies.

This from the guy who’s been working on Dead Guy and Psycho Ex for about 2 years now.

Random Question #45

What is the thing you still have to prove?

First Time In My Life

Tonight I wrote emails to my U.S. Congresswoman, to both my U.S. Senators, and the the President. I guess you could say I was pissed off and scared. This was the first time in my life I have ever written to any of my elected representatives (and I let them know it). 

Did it make me feel better? Eh.

Jon Stewart, Twitter, and The Weather Channel Just Destroyed My Life

Stay with me here:

Everybody see Jon Stewart take on Jim Cramer last night? Stewart destroyed him. No, wait, that’s too easy – he actually did more than that. Stewart destroyed the financial press in this country. No, he actually did more than that. Stewart destroyed the media. And for someone who has built his entire life on the idea of writing for the media, that is quite a lot for me to say. Stewart destroyed everything. 

How did Stewart do this? By being a grown-up. By actually believing that Cramer and CNBC and the financial press and the entire media is supposed to serve us. To be held accountable to us. He didn’t destroy Cramer so much as dare to live in a different world than Cramer lives in. That world that most of us have somehow found ourselves living in.

Cramer was saying that in the game-show world of the financial press – in the game-show world of the media – people can get caught up in the crazy game and make mistakes. Stewart just looked at him and asked him how he can be so useless and so shallow and so pitiful as to live in a game-show world. This shit is real. This is not a game show. Grow up.

The world financial system is not supposed to be a game show. The financial press and journalism are not supposed to live in a game-show world. Grow up.

My wife and I sat there open-mouthed. We had expected 30 minutes of light-hearted banter. What we got was the truth.

Sometimes you know something. You know it intellectually but you kind of take it for granted and it fades away into the background and then every once in a while – BOOM – it hits you again and it knocks you off your ass and you feel surprised. But more than surprised, you feel embarrassed and even ashamed that you were surprised. Because you already knew it. You were supposed to have already known it so you weren’t supposed to be surprised. That’s what happened last night.

When the show was over, in my knocked-off-my-ass stupor, I flipped to the Weather Channel. You know, to figure out what to wear to work in the morning. This is where my life really started to shatter. Did I get the weather report? No. I got a middle-aged woman standing in front of a weather map of the U.S. talking about twitter. The woman – who was supposed to be telling me about the weather forecast – was telling me that The Weather Channel has some relationship with twitter where people can tweet each other telling each other what the weather is like right now. This is where I lost it.

I don’t want someone – some random person – to tweet what the weather is right now. That is not news or expertise. What I want is a meteorologist, an educated expert – a grown-up – to tell me what the weather will be like tomorrow. Just like what I want from CNBC is a sober-minded, educated and expert financial analyst – a grown-up – to give me financial news. Not a game-show host. Does that make me a grumpy old man? Maybe. What it makes me is a grown-up.

But wait: that’s not really what this post is about. This is what it is about: youth culture is out of control and my life has to change.

Some say that before the mid-1950s, before James Dean, there was no youth culture. Or more accurately, there was no mass-marketed youth culture. There were troubled teens and adolescent ordeals, yes, but there was no mass-marketed idea of “cool.” There were no PG-13 movies, no TV shows, no alternative music. In the movies, people went from being “kids” to “grown-ups,” with nothing in between. Was this reality? No, but it was the media. 

Then along came Elvis, and James Dean, and Bob Dylan, and the 60s, and the counterculture. These images were mass-marketed, and finally kids everywhere knew what they were supposed to do to be “cool.” Suddenly there was a global understanding of “us” vs. “them,” of a “generation gap” which had never been acknowledged before on a global scale. You still had the stodgy old grown-ups who were born before this and didn’t “get it” (like Nixon), but all the “cool kids” could be cynical and cool, sticking it to “the man.” Forever young. It became better to be “cool” than to be “square,” or respectable, or grown up. “I hope I die before I get old,” etc.

And here we are in 2009. Now the “cool kids” are all we have left. Everybody running things today – the government, finance, all our institutions – grew up after the advent of youth culture. They would rather be cool than be grown-ups, no matter how ridiculous or misguided their actions really are. So today weather experts would rather talk about twitter than give weather forecasts. Financial experts would rather live in a fast-paced game-show world than be bothered with the state of the real economy. You have to admit, it is more fun. It is cooler than the weather or finance. And the kids today might actually accept you and not look at you as “square” or “a grown-up.” Anything but that. We all know the “kids’ table” is much cooler than the “grown-up table.”

Watching that weather forecaster blather on about twitter, it dawned upon me that this is all the media is: trying to look cool to today’s youth. The only things they are going to do, the only movies or TV shows they are going to make, are projects that look cool to the youth culture, no matter how ridiculous or misguided they are on their face. This goes for everything – even weather, even finance.

Like I said, sometimes you intellectually know something but it still knocks you off your ass anyway.

I don’t want to be a grown-up either. It’s not as much fun as being a kid or living in a game-show world. But I am a grown-up. Somehow I’ve become one (like Jon Stewart). I don’t care about youth culture or about looking cool or Twittering or living in a game show. The stories I am interested in – and interested in writing – are not about youth culture, they are not for youth culture, they are completely uninterested in youth culture. And yet what I am is a writer. And I have built everything on the idea of writing for the media. 

I have to tell you, I just don’t see it happening. In my 20s, when I had just moved to L.A. and had an agent and was pitching stuff and writing TV samples, sure. My culture was youth culture. That was me, and my Seinfeld sample was damn good. But now? I’m 40 and I just have zero interest in Twitter or American Idol or comic books. So I just don’t see it happening for me. It’s time to move on. Seriously.

Novels maybe?

Random Question #43

Are you less fun than you used to be?