A Rare Opportunity
Atlantis Events, the gay charter company (which has ferried me on a number of fantastic vacations) is about to debut their new Web site. They've sent a test version of this site to "alumni" and asked for our comments. I'm excited, because it's rare that I have a prepared opinion saved up and ready-to-email! So, I sent them my posting from a number of months ago:

A Marketing Golden Rule.

I was thinking of sending along
Enough About You. What About Me? Some Thoughts on Customer Service Surveys,
but I don't want them to think I'm a crazy person.

It May Not Be Your Passion If:

#3 - Pursuing your passion clashes big time with your personality.


I probably wouldn't make a great Trappist monk. Although the life fascinates me. Simplicity. Quiet. Focus.

I remember seeing a 60 Minutes piece on Thomas Merton, probably the most famous Trappist monk of all (if one can or should label a monk "famous.") He had fascinating things to say, and I read his book The Seven Storey Mountain not long afterwards.

But I know I wouldn't make a good Trappist monk for one reason: I'm a raging extrovert. A huge "E" on the Meyers-Briggs profile. I not only "get" energy from other people, I can feel it coming in. I don't want to be the center of attention, and I don't need to be onstage. But put me in an enclosed office for hours at a time, and I shut down. My brain ceases to function - all creativity goes right out the window.

And isn't that a major portion of a Trappist monk's life? Deep introspection, silence (or should I say lack of conversation)?

Sure, we all want and crave a certain amount of calm and rest in our lives. But if I were to pursue that as my passion, well, then passion would drain out of my life.

But I'm going to read The Seven Storey Mountain again. I've still got my copy. And one of the neat things about getting older? You don't have to buy as many books, since you forget what was in many of them...

#1: You're in love with the idea of your passion, but you can't stand the component parts.

#2 - You and your passion have a long distance relationship (and you aren't willing to move.)

It May Not Be Your Passion If:

#2 - You and your passion have a long distance relationship (and you aren't willing to move).

I thought I wanted to be a screenwriter. I wrote plays for 7 years, and even had one produced in Los Angeles. I met actors I'd seen on television, now playing the roles I wrote. It was all very exciting. So I started writing screenplays. But I live in DC. I briefly considered moving to LA - I even spent some time there, getting my bearings, seeing what it's like..

Trouble was, I REALLY didn't like it. I remember looking at the Hollywood Hills one evening, at the lights coming on in the cliff-dwelling homes, and I thought "I don't want that."

In my DC neighborhood, I walk to work, the gym, grocery stores, restaurants. In LA, I'd have to drive. In DC, I leave my house a few minutes before I have to be just about anywhere. In LA, I'd have to leave my apartment maybe an hour beforehand, and figure out the shortest drive to where I wanted to go. In DC, I have all this extra time, given to me because I don't have to commute. In LA, it would be all about the commute.

For a screenwriter, it's also all about the networking. In Hollywood. Not in DC. And it's really difficult if you're not living in LA.

Not that you have to move to where your passion resides, if it's geographically important. But I've found that distance can be a critical factor in deciding what I want to do with my life.

And I'm still living in DC.

Read Part 1: You're in love with the idea of your passion, but you can't stand the component parts.

It May Not Be Your Passion If:

#1 - You're in love with the idea of your passion, but you can't stand the component parts.

For years I've heard "do what you love," and "follow your bliss," and "find your passion."

But what's my passion? What happens if it changes? How do I know if I should quit and do something else?

I've thought about those questions - over and over. And I've come up with some ways to measure for myself whether or not what I'm doing is REALLY what I want to do. Hence, #1: It may not be your "passion" if: You're in love with the idea of your passion, but you can't stand the component parts.

No matter what you do, no matter how exciting your passion may be, there are going to be portions of it that aren't all that interesting. Still, they shouldn't grind you down. I believe that you don't have to absolutely love everything about your dream, but those "grunt work" parts should still do something for you. Let's say mountain biking is your passion. What are the component parts? Well, you have to know about the bike's technical aspects (how much air in the tires, what type of tire for what terrain, what the bike's made of), along with safety concerns (types of helmets, other protective clothing and accessories), and where to ride (what time of year is the best, how crowded is it, how long does it take to get there.) If you say you love love love mountain biking, but bikes and fitness and terrains just bore you to tears, that may be telling you something.

I'll be posting these from time to time, and when I get to the last one, I'll include the entire list. I've come up with fifteen of these statements... who knows how long this will take!

There Comes One Of Them Now!
Turner Classic Movies is running a Guest Programmer contest. All you need to do is create a short video explaining why you should be chosen as Guest Programmer for an evening of movies on TCM and you might just win. Funny how they don't ask you what movies you'd pick. So I've gone ahead and NOT produced a video, and selected the movies I'd screen if I was chosen:

Because it's the greatest movie ever made.

Because it's out of its mind.

Because it's intensely frightening, hugely influential, and made for about $7.00.

Because it's the most underrated movie musical of the sixties.

It's About Joy
Fascinating article in Sunday's New York Times (titled "Seeking Fans, Ballet Scrambles for a Killer App") about the role of ballet in modern American culture, and the financial/artistic struggles of ballet companies in New York City and across the country. The article lists the usual tactics arts institutions employ to bring in audiences: "Girls Night Out" at the New York City Ballet, offering dessert and "girl talk" with ballerinas; newly-minted ballets featuring tried-and-true stories from other media like "Peter Pan" and "Dracula." I say "usual" because I read about this kind of thing all the time. Instead of trying to understand how to appeal to the customer when the customer says "I don't like or need what you offer," the institutions merely ape popular culture, and nobody wins.

But a quote by Italian choreographer Luca Veggeti really set my head spinning: “You have companies saying, ‘We have to do Peter Pan and Dracula,’ ” he added, laughing. “What is the point? You’re not like a TV program. You’re supposed to raise the cultural level of your audience."

I have never
never
NEVER
gone to any artistic performance to raise my cultural level.

I have always gone because I wanted to see something amazing, hear something incredible, or experience something transforming.

NEVER NEVER NEVER TO RAISE MY CULTURAL LEVEL OR AWARENESS!

I went to school for that.

While My Guitar Gently Weeps
The Washington Post story DC's commuters ignoring virtuoso violinist Joshua Bell as he played his rarified Stradivarius in the DC Metro during morning rush hour has generated much silliness among the online marketing pundits. I say "silliness" because, the way they're carrying on, you'd think this was a rigorous scientific experiment.

But it wasn't. It was merely a guy playing a violin in the subway. Something we've all seen before.

I'd like to see the experiment repeated, this time with P Diddy, Jennifer Lopez, or Clay Aiken doing some platform performing at 7:30 am. I think the results would be quite different. I bet there'd be a dangerous crush of people, and rush hour would slam to a halt.

Favorite TV Guys
I used to include this sort of thing in this blog, but I got away from it as the months went on. Still, I just want to take a moment and identify the guys currently on TV who make me stop zapping the channels. I might not watch the entirety of any show they're on (except SVU), but they do give me pause...

Mike Rowe of Dirty Jobs
Cleans up like a dream.





Chris Meloni of SVU
A barely stable(r) character.




Bear Grylls of Man vs. Wild
Who knew misery could be so much fun.





John Cena of WWE/Raw
You feared him in high school, but not anymore.

RE: Do "Straight" Bloggers Read "Gay" Blogs?
Many thanks to Dustin and Steve for not only reading my post on this subject (as they were quoted in it), but for taking the time to respond in the comments section. It seems that we're all pretty much thinking the same way! I could get all philosophical at this point and launch into a major wordfest about how the differences we seem to find in other people really tells each of us more about our own fears (and my fears I know all too well)... but it's finally spring in DC and it's Friday and we all want to go outside and celebrate the weekend. Thanks again, Dustin and Steve, for your thoughtful dialog on the subject!!

It Was Never About The Hills

I came to a major decision over the past weekend.

First, I'll set up the scene.

I was moving pretty quickly through the first act of my zombie movie's fourth draft, ruthlessly cutting line after line of text. And it suddenly hit me: I was bored doing this. Not procrastination-bored as in "I really feel like doing something else." Not dramatically-bored as in "this story is dull and not interesting me at all." But bored as in "I'm sitting here in front of my laptop, actively editing and re-arranging characters, dialogue and action, and I'm bored with the whole thing. Bored with dreams of being a screenwriter. No longer interested in visioning the movie as it might someday play on the screen. Tired of thinking I'll someday be able to look up my name on IMDB."

So I did the only thing I could do at that moment. I stopped writing. And I spent the next hour or so really looking at this "dream" of mine, which I've carried since I was a kid. And I could see that, while I've changed in those forty or so years, the dream itself has not. It's been been years of dreaming about attention (getting it), ego (building it), and rescue (as in "money.") The dream hasn't grown, hasn't morphed, and hasn't done anything but lay there and demand my attention when I'm trying to do just about anything else.

Now the dream has become a whiny, nagging partner, using fear tactics to keep my attention. "You'll die a mediocre person," it intimates. "You'll be totally uninteresting if you stop."

So, I'll be uninteresting, and I'll die mediocre, I told it. I decided that I would no longer write screenplays.

Suddenly, the whiny annoying voice of my "dream" had nowhere to gain traction. It kind of just layed there, powerless. And I felt... calm.

The Paradox of Time
Does this ever happen to you: It's Friday, and you look ahead to Saturday or Sunday and see a large block of time that you haven't designated for anything, and you think "I can fill that with some really quality writing time or research or working out at the gym!"

You look forward to it, you may even arrange your workspace or gather your gym clothes the night before. The weekend comes, and starting at 2pm (if that's the time you designated), you suddenly find something else you need to do. But you feel guilty.

Still, the guilt doesn't move you to your work space or the weights. The spark that was present those nights before just isn't there. Let's say you finally open up the file, look at the words glowing in front of you, or make it to the gym, but your body feels like the gun's gone off in the 100 yard dash, Literally. And you jump up out of your chair and head for the fridge or say "20 minutes on the elliptical machine should do it for today!"

One of my brothers described this very sort of thing when he had his first kid (my first nephew.) "I think of all these great things I can do, I can get done, once he's down for his nap," my brother said. "But when he's finally out, all I want to do is sit in a chair and turn into broccoli."

Life Intrusion
I look at the date of my last post - April 8 - five whole days. Might as well be a year, in blog time! I wonder, what should I say? How about a run down on the places I've been spending my creativity? Allright. Here's what I've been up to:

Developing a new blog, one focused on a small, niche audience.
Updating my resume, for my upcoming "Marketing Mike Initiative."
Writing my screenplay (EM:ZD, the zombie movie, 4th draft).
Investigating screenwriter blogs.

I've got a table covered with papers, and papers covered with notes. I wonder if I'm attempting too many things at once, and then I remember how I work best, in short, intense bursts of energy, alternated with brain-clearing physical activity like working out, biking, or just getting outdoors.

Shoe Movies
I watched "The Pursuit of Happyness" last night, and it was definitely more uplifting than "Children of Men." I really liked both, and I noticed something similar about these two movies:

They both had plot moments involving the main character's lack of shoes at critical times.

Is this my coincidence, or their's?

Spring Is Broken
It's cold here in DC, I read that the Cherry Blossoms have blown off the trees, it snowed last night and I'm not feeling creative. My toes and fingers are cold. So it was probably not a good idea to watch "Children of Men" (pictured) this afternoon, but I did. It was fascinating. I'm saving "The Pursuit of Happyness" for tonight, after the sun goes down. I'm hoping it's a bit more uplifting.

Do Straight Bloggers Read "Gay" Blogs
Lately, I've been wondering about my tag line: Life in DC, Comments on Culture, Hunting the Elusive Male. Especially in regards to hunting for a new job, which I will have to do starting in May.

I'm seeing my blogging as an online example of my writing, as well as a clue to my personality. I'm thinking of including it in my job search, as it also shows my understanding of how web sites work (or don't!)

But - I'm also wondering if potential employers would be put off if they find out I'm Gay right off the bat.

I know that any employer is going to have to find out soon after they hire me, as I'm not going to pretend to be someone I'm not. I did that for a number of years and as a way of living a life, it basically rots.

Straight people don't have to worry about this sort of thing - our society is arranged so that the classic "male & female" couple style is primarily assumed by just about everyone. So if you're a guy married to a girl (or the other way around), legally divorced or separated, or dating a member of the opposite sex, that's deeply ingrained in so many psyches as "normal."

I feel, however, that blogging adds so much of a personal touch, that it's imperative I include a little something about my life that takes up such a big space in it.

I did have an interesting (and highly educational) experience just a few minutes ago, which proves that I can make have the same knee-jerk reactions I'm worried others might have.

I visited a couple of sites I find interesting: Dustin Staiger's Casual Fridays and Steve Wilson's Waypoint. Today being Good Friday, each had a post referencing the day within the scope of his belief (not sure if that's grammatical, but who cares?)

Anyway, I immediately thought "Whoa, Dustin and Steve, they're both talking about their religious belief in the middle of their blogs on branding and corporate communications and the like! I'm not sure how I feel about that!" (Full disclosure point: I was brought up and confirmed Catholic...)

Then I was immediately smacked with my own voice, inside my head, telling me "Um, aren't you doing the same thing?" AND aren't you applying a double standard here if you don't understand where these bloggers are coming from?"

Yup. I was. After realizing I'm capable of the same kind of thinking I fear in others, I now know that it's a fantastic thing these two bloggers let me know where they come from.

Zombie Tales
Argh. Tuesday afternoon was gorgeous - warm, clear, sunny. I took my laptop out to the corner cafe and sat down in a perfect spot, flipped open the screen and started to work on "The Zombie Movie* where I had left off.

Since this is the fourth draft, I'm at the point where I go through the script from the beginning, look at each scene, each character, each line of dialog and make it the absolute best that it can be. No more playing around with characters persuading each other to action. Now they need to "just do it," make a decision, stop fooling around. Clear, sharp actions, all wedded to what each person wants in every scene. This also includes a heavy amount of editing. I'm definitely at the point where I can look at a scene and actually see where it needs to end. And sometimes that end point happens in the middle of the scene. I hit the delete button and hold it down as I obliterate line after line. This is all to make the script move, like lightning.

Then this sharp pain jabbed me, inside my right temple, behind my right eye. I thought it would go away at first, so I just kept typing. But it didn't.

I figured it was some kind of migraine (which I get every five years or so.) But they usually announce themselves with some kind of visual disturbance. This time, it was just the pain.

I finished my drink and actually got some dialog written, but the pain was far too annoying to work through. I had to go home.

"Rats!" I thought. "Gorgeous afternoon, great seat at the outdoor cafe, ruined." The pain lasted a full two days. I've been under a bunch of stress, especially at work. So I wasn't surprised I was felled in this manner.

At least it wasn't an aneurysm! I've taken tomorrow off, so I will hopefully be able to get some more work done, even though the weather's taken a retreat back into winter.

Down and Dirty
Need a break from "The Secret" and the law of attraction and the ever-popular positive thinking? Catch any one of these five Cynical Cinema masterpieces (showing often on Turner Classic Movies.) They're perfect for those times when you just have to think really negative thoughts. When you look at the world and all you can see are the soggy, grimy Starbucks cups flattened in the gutter. The sky's overcast, the temperature's 50 degrees, and the only colors you can see are grey, whitish-grey, darkish grey, and brown.

A Face in the Crowd
Andy Griffith as ne'er-do-well parasite Lonesome Rhodes, championed by Patricia Neal into a plain talking, tobacco-chawin', heartland-born good-old-boy. He becomes a success and gains power, but his abrasiveness gets played out on larger and larger stages. Until, of course, The End.

The Sweet Smell of Success (pictured)
Burt Lancaster plays powerful New York City columnist J.J. Hunsecker, who holds court in Times Square clubs and bars. He's the center of a society that values who you know over what you actually do. But Burt's holding a ton of stuff inside, and it isn't pretty. Not at all.

Ace in the Hole (AKA "The Big Carnival")
Kirk Douglas plays slimy newspaper reporter Chuck Tatum, who deliberately stalls rescue efforts saving a man trapped in a cave, just to drive up the story, get it played nationwide, and make himself successful. This is the movie that got me thinking about this post, when I saw it a couple of weeks ago. Awesome final shot.

Kiss Me Deadly
Ralph Meeker plays sleazy LA private investigator Mike Hammer, who gets a lead on something big... REALLY big. He doesn't know what it is, but that doesn't matter. He dominates his way through the movie, abusing people left and right, until the end. That's when he gets burned.

The Apartment
Jack Lemmon plays monolithic NYC insurance firm gruntworker C.C. Baxter, who "sublets" his apartment nightly to married executives who promises him promotions just so they have a place to entertain their "dates." And when Jack gets the success he strives for, it comes with a whole lot of extra baggage. However, this one does have a quasi-happy ending.

These 5 flicks that show us at our most negative. All are in black and white, from the fifties/early sixties, and feature main characters see lying, cheating and stealing as too tame. Basically, these movies are primers on how NOT to get ahead!

Don't Be An April Fool
Online humor is tough. When email started to catch on, everyone noticed that messages tended to sound more terse and dismissive than ordinary speech or formal business letters. Emoticons cropped up as a method of softening chatter =) and identifying text meant to be humorous.

Today I came across a couple of blogs that are dealing with online April foolishness. The ultra-famous Seth Godin posted a piece criticizing online retailer Archie McPhee for offering a "baby parachute." While the item screams out "April Fools Sucker!" (and the comment confirms this), I agree with Seth. It's irresponsible to offer a potentially dangerous product, even if it doesn't exist.

Copyblogger's "Greatest Link Attraction Strategy Ever" is clearly a joke, although gullible me took it for serious until I remembered what day it is. Will someone try to fake their own death online? Probably. However, it's disturbing to see, in light of the current trouble with a well-known blogger receiving death threats, and so much opportunity for anonymity and misrepresentation on the Internet(s).

Why go to all this trouble in search of cleverness? Search me. These are hoaxes, and there are plenty of them going around - think about all the email virus messages, or that often repeated tale of LSD on public phones. The trouble with hoaxes? They just aren't funny. Couple this fact with that tendency for online communication to seem more serious than it might be, and there's just too much room for trouble.

Atlantis Events created a bogus Web page last year at this time, offering a cruise to Denver, Colorado. It was actually kind of funny, although anyone who hadn't experienced one of their vacations would likely miss out on the joke. And this kind of corporation humor can backfire in odd ways. I remember a selling point for this impossible vacation - "dine in any one of seven separate restaurants, all offering the same food!" That's actually the case on cruise ships.

Sometimes, when going for the ridiculous, we end up getting nearer the truth than we realize!

Zombie Tales
I took my laptop out to the corner "mom and pop" coffee place recently and actually started on draft #4 of Zombie Movie. I've had this dynamite opening scene in my head for over a year, and in the pre-seasonal warm weather we've been having, I was able to get it down on paper - I mean, on laptop screen and saved in a file.

I also experienced a strange sensation while doing it, one that I've forgotten about in the context of writing. The only way to explain it is to compare it to working out. You know how you feel if you've been away from the gym for a couple of weeks and then get over your inertia and show up - only to find that your muscles protest against lifting and pushing weights around? And the protest with a kind of creaking pain?

That's the sensation, only it was in my head. It actually hurt to write. Bizarre. But I did get five pages written, and most of what I wrote conformed to what has been sitting in my brain for the longest time.

Now if work would just calm down and quit being so exhausting I can then write some more...

A Real Life Place
I spent all morning in a hearing on Capitol Hill today, and developed a headache that felt like railroad spikes driving into my skull. After a couple of ibuprofen, the pain subsided. I'm glad I don't have to go there very often, just enough to make me what politics are like!

In the movie Breakfast at Tiffany's, Audrey Hepburn says to George Peppard:

If I could find a real-life place that'd make me feel like Tiffany's, then - then I'd buy some furniture and give the cat a name.

And I asked myself: what place makes me feel like Tiffany's? Certainly not Capitol Hill. Without over-analyzing exactly what Tiffany's is supposed to make one feel like in this context, I came up with the following:

1. Mt. Washington (although it can be deadly.)
2. Route 50 (driving east across the Chesapeake Bay Bridge on 6pm on a summer Friday.)
3. In front of any pair of speakers playing Ravel's Le Tombeau de Couperin.
4. Barcelona (although I've only been there once.)

Other than that, there aren't any more. But maybe that's the point.

Oh yeah, I also started writing draft #4 of Kickass Zombie Movie.