Incompetent Hipsters: Lovecraft is a Mess!!

We bought a veggie oil car from Lovecraft BioFuels a couple of years back when it was still a novel idea. It was a cool experiment, but ultimately, the car we got was a lemon. The crazy thing is, we first got hip to the idea through a friend of a friend, and then oddly enough, my mentor from Project Involve, Michael Lehmann, also had a couple of the cars. We picked out our green beauty, then they said it was take a month for the repairs to be complete. So, we paid our deposit and waited. And waited. Finally, after six months, we got the car. But the whole time, it seemed like LoveCraft was attempting to pull one over on us. They were rude, completely disorganized and had this really annoying "cooler than thou" attitude. It was like all hipster with very, very little business savvy. The people who worked there kept making all of these excuses for the elusive "Brian," too. I was ready to pull out and call it quits, but my sweet husband was so invested in this green beauty that he couldn't let it go. Anyway, once we finally got the car, it issues, like the transmission and a few other things. It was okay, I mean, the car still drives, but we ultimately got tired of having an unreliable vehicle. We've still got the car (mostly bc my husband won't let go of it), but we're ready to sell it. I'm sure the right person could do something with it, but us not knowing much about cars makes it tough. Anyway, today, there is an article in the LA Times that says, "Cutting-edge Silver Lake biofuel company is embroiled in a legal battle." It's all about how fucked up Brian and his business practices were. What a bunch drama!

Facebook

I was extremely resistant to getting on Facebook for the longest time. My producer was urging me to get on, but still, I was kind of skeptical, because I've been on Tribe, MySpace and Friendster, and ultimately, I found social networking to be a big waste of time. Anyway, sites like MySpace are so fucking ghetto, who wants to set up a profile there, right? But I finally bit the bullet and got onto Facebook a couple of months ago, and I have to say, a very interesting thing happened. But first, some back story. I grew up in Raleigh, NC. Now days, Raleigh is a very diverse place with so many different types of people/things going on, it's awesome. But back when I was growing up there, it just wasn't that diverse. I always felt like a fish out of water amongst the white, southern kids in my school. I was this funky weird chick wearing a mix of Indian clothing, starting an environmental club at my school and reading Ayn Rand. I really didn't care about things like prom, dating and the usual high school pursuits. I think everyone feels awkwardness to some degree in high school, but those years kind of traumatized me. I got picked on my some pretty mean people, and I started hanging out with a crowd of people who were kind of rough--I started drinking, doing drugs, etc. at a young age. Then, I got busted by my parents and my life became even more hellacious. To make matters worse, I wasn't a steallar student like the rest of my Indian compatriots. Sure, I was still getting A's and B's and an occasional C in math, but my sister and every other Indian kid we knew pretty much made straight A's. My parents basically thought I was a major under achiever with serious issues, so they made my junior year of high school a living hell--constant lectures, no going anywhere, and studying for the SAT every night for 2-3 hours (I did very poorly on the SATS). The only thing that saved me was my writing. My junior year of high school, a teacher of mine encouraged me to join newspaper staff, and I thrived. It was the first time I did something right, and she gave me a chance to write a column for a local newspaper. Then, my senior year, I won an Parade Magazine essay contest, so I was vindicated by my folks. Needless to say, my high school years were hard. I have one really close friend from high school, but she became a pretty conservative Christian and we went down very different paths. Anyway, back to FaceBook. After high school, I went to college at UNC, then immediately moved away from NC. I haven't lived there in 12 years or so, mostly because I want to forget those very difficult years. But recently, a few people from high school reached out to me on Facebook. A couple people I was friends with, then a couple people who were sort of "popular" and I knew only marginally. At first, I was pretty weirded out when I got their requests. There's something uncomfortable about re-connecting with a past you so want to forget. But I went ahead and added, and was surprised when a couple of people even wrote some really nice notes on my wall. Then, I started getting a few more requests from people I grew up with, and a funny thing has happened. My re-connecting with all of these folks, seeing that they're adults now with kids, jobs, etc. makes me realize that everyone was probably going through the same thing I was, I mean that awkwardness of of adolescence. My memories of certain people from those days feel like they were characters in a movie. But seeing them on FaceBook makes them more real, more human. It's definately strange, but interesting at the same time.

A Very Short Story

This a funny little short piece I wrote recently. I don't think anyone else thinks it's funny except for me, but hey, sometimes we have to humor ourselves, right? I submitted it to a couple of flash fiction publications, but they all said no. One editor told me he thought it was just plain weird. Anyway, here it is:

French Fries Cause Greenhouse Gases
Last Tuesday morning on the way to Stockton, I had an urge for the perfect mix of potato and salt and oil and ketchup in a bottomless pit of red and yellow cardboard. Supersized. I let up on the gas and gave my right signal as the desert sun set, ready to take exit one fifty six. But then I crept past it, without ever even moving into the far lane. Instead, I waited for an exit number that was divisible by seven. Seven times twenty equals one forty: gone. Seven times seventy-seven equals one eighty-nine: safe. Also, enough time to consider the facts: The fries contain beef seasoning. Beef seasoning comes from cows. Cows cause greenhouse gases. Greenhouse gases contribute to global warming. I am perpetuating world misery and denigration. But are salt-and-potatoes-and-beef seasoning really detrimental? I wiped my sweaty palms on my lap, drifting into the center of the road. Suddenly, I heard a loud and sustained horn “BLEEEEEEEEET.” I immediately swerved to the left. I glanced out my window as a truck driver with wild curly hair pressed his middle finger against the glass. My hands shook as I took exit 167 for a reputable sandwich joint.

It Takes a Mountain

Getting a feature film made is like moving a mountain. It takes a huge amount of resources, and a fierce determination that isn't always easy to sustain. I've been working my butt off, trying to convince people to help us make this movie, invest $20K in a piece of art that will live forever. We've gotten some investors on board, and there is definitely a movie in the works. But we still need more investors, and though we have a number of people who have said yes, we need the rest of the checks. It is not easy to raise money and on the days when I feel blue about our progress and how things are going, I try to remember that a year ago, we didn't even have a bank account. But there are days when I sometimes feel like this is so tough, that it simply may not happen. Deep down inside, I am so determined and I know that it will, but still, it is still very hard to put yourself out there sometimes. The thing that ultimately keeps me going is the vision of the film, this idea of a young girl trying to find herself amongst the complicated world of adults, a young girls who finds solace in the forest. Every character that I create is in some ways, an iteration of myself, and while I wasn't a science nerd when I was growing up, I was a book nerd. I spent hours and hours in my room reading, sometimes a book a week. Sometimes is was the Sweet Valley High series, other times it was the The Fountainhead and other literary works. The world of my parents was also confusing, because my parents fought constantly about things that made to sense to my sister and I. My parents put every ounce of their energy into us, but their fighting was so confusing that my sister and now as adults sometimes spend hours trying to dissect exactly what was going on there. I think that my parents were so consumed in their fighting, my sister and I both had to find ways of coping. My sister is more introverted than I am, but her studying was a means of dealing--she is now a doctor, and has no problem with the long hours of shutting herself up with the books. I was the less studious one, but I always loved to read and write, and now as an adult, I find sitting in closed rooms for long hours very comforting. Isn't it interesting how our past effects us? How we use it to create the present? Raspberry Magic is an iteration of myself in so many different ways, I have to make it.