Reverse Bucket List

It's New Year's Resolution time and that means it's time to make lists of crap we will be passionate about for a brief period of time.

Instead of resolutions, I'm going to make a reverse bucket list.  For those of you who don't know what a bucket list is, it's a list of all the things you think you need to do before you die.  If you've ever made a bucket list, first off, why are you such a death obsessed psycho? Second, why can't you just let your life flow naturally, taking experiences as they come or as you pursue them?  Third, that movie The Bucket List sucked.  I already saw that movie and it was called Space Cowboys and it was way better because it was in space.

So a Reverse Bucket List is a list of things you NEVER EVER IN YOUR WHOLE LIFE WANT TO DO OR HAVE HAPPEN TO YOU.

Valerie and I both did this.  You should check out her list. VALERIE's Reverse Bucket List

JAMES BEST'S REVERSE BUCKET LIST

I Never Want To:

1. Watch Valerie fall out of a hot air balloon just past my grasp as I scream, "NOOOOOOOOO!!!"

2.  Be caught making fun of a T-Rex. By a T-Rex.

3.  Get gut shot out in the desert and be left by bad cowboys to die.

4.  Live through an ice cream shortage.

5.  Be forced by unforeseen future circumstances to have to hunt bunnies and kitties for food.

6.  Spend a night alone with a moo cow in a doorless, windowless room.

7.  Watch anything starring Miley Cyrus.

8.  Eat something living that is eating me at the same time.

9.  Take a road trip with the radio stuck on the Top 40s Station.

10.  Learn what the "that" is in the lyric "I would do anything for love but I won't do that".

11.  Have to pry live lobster claws off of my face or private parts.

12.  Attend any concert by any teen or child performer on the Disney channel.

13.  Ever be in the same country as this bug.

14.  Break down next to a cornfield in the middle of the night and walk through the corn to the farmhouse.

15.  Have to be in a war and be responsible for war-like activities.

16.  Pull a tapeworm out of my mouth or butt.

17.  Be awake for any kind of surgery where I'm going to see my own flesh meat.

18.  Find out that I, as I suspected, did not fit in very well at prison.

19.  Time travel to a time before deodorant or milkshakes.

20.  Discover I'm a terrible shot during a zombie apocalypse.

21.  Have some sort of nightmare surprise party where all my ex-girlfriends are waiting to tell Valerie how terrible I was to them.

22.  Be cursed to wear only European styles for the rest of my life.

23.  Somehow make it to the Star Wars universe and have Yoda tell me I have absolutely no Jedi aptitude. (There was so much sadness in my fingers as I wrote that.)

24.  Instead of a werewolf become a were-something that sucks.  Like a were-donkey.  Or a were-Michael Bay.

25.  Be in an eating contest of black licorice.

26.  Have my life turned into a movie and then find out it sucked.

27.  Wake up in some nightmare world where I have to play team sports everyday.

28.  Have the recipe to Coca-Cola destroyed or forgotten.

29.  Wake up and find out the only thing playing on tv for the rest of time is Two and a Half Men and Everybody Loves Raymond.

30.  Find out all my suspicions about horses being dirty murder hell creatures who just want to chomp off my mister parts is totally true.  In the most literal way.

31.  Have my whole life narrated in my head by Gilbert Gottfried.

32.  Live in some sort of police state where chocolate and peanut butter could not come together in holy matrimony like God intended.

33.  Die from anything I could get in the game Oregon Trail.

How Art Feels Like Prostitution

On Sunday, my friend Joseph Clay, a very talented writer and filmmaker, mentioned that art is hard because it feels so selfish.  As if you're spending all your time focused on you.

You start asking yourself questions.  Why am I doing this?  Why should people care?  Why is making this important?  Why do I even need to?  Who is this for if not for me?  What is this?  Why does it matter?

I'm going to be upfront here and say I don't have answers to these.

I'm suffering from a little bit of Want Everything Now Syndrome.  I would like to say that most days it feels like I'm being proactive.  I'm meeting with writer friends.  Talking to people about agents.  Getting the scoop on the 'biz'.  I've sort of put it into overdrive lately and that maybe explains why I feel a little frantic.  Because I've sped up the pace of my life.

I don't get this agent business.  Finding someone to like me.  To believe in me and champion me to other people.  It feels forced.  It feels like a blind date.

I get writing. The symphony structure of drama.  The jazz nature of comedy.

I get sitting down and just doing it.  Because that's how it goes.  I sit down every day and write something.  Depending on the amount of time I have, I usually produce at least a scene, a poem, an interchange, a structure.

Truthfully, if there's Writer's Block, I've never seen it.  In my opinion, Writer's Block occurs when people don't have enough projects on their plate.  I can't wait to finish something and move on to the next thing.  Either I'm very blessed or too obsessed.  Let's say a combination of both.

(I feel sorry for anyone who has been around me this summer.  I've talked about nothing but the scripts I'm writing.  I've dominated conversations with my own concerns and obsessions.  I can't talk normally to people anymore. I've become a weirdo.)

But once you produce something, any kind of art, there's the last step.  The worst step.  Where you show it. Where you step up to people and say, "Please experience this."  You hand them a script.  You invite them to a gallery.  You sit them down and pop in the dvd or pull it up on your computer.  You hand them the object as a gift.

And people think it means "Love me."  But mostly it means, "Understand me."

This is where I'm at.  Saying to everyone, "Hey, I'm a writer.  I write.  A lot. Here's some stuff. Check it out if you're bored.  I promise I won't think about why you didn't finish reading it and didn't get back to me and tell me your thoughts and whether I matter or should just give up and live in the Appalachians and eat apple mash and goatmeat until I die of some old timey disease."

I know why so many people give up on art.  It's taxing to put yourself out there.  Maybe most artists want to 'make it' because it doesn't bring money and fame as much as it brings an end to explaining yourself.  An end to justification.  An end to looking across at someone and saying, "I don't know why I do it either. I just can't stop."

Jobs I Would Be Terrible At

I don't know if I've had a job I was amazing at really. I'm kind of a dreamer. I really only want ever want to be writing. When I was a waiter, I would stand off to the side of my tables jotting down poems in my notebook. When I was a cashier, I would write dialogue on the back of receipt paper. Most of my jobs I've gotten by with a smile and a joke. Here's some other jobs I'm sure I'd be terrible at.

 DOCTOR

There's Dr. Best barely listening to his patients.  He wears the appropriate "sad and understanding" face as they tell him their problems but where good doctors would hear the vital details that lead them to the diagnosis, Dr. Best is thinking of dolphins.  Wouldn't he like to have a dolphin baby?  Surely as a doctor, he has enough money to construct a giant pool for his dolphin child?  How would we drive his aqua boy to the vet?  A van filled with water?  Maybe a waterproof convertible?  Uh-oh, Dr. Best.  Your patient is in cardiac arrest.

LAWYER

Look at James Best, Esq.  He sure looks dapper in that suit.  He spent way more time picking out this suit than he did reading all the necessary case work for this trial.  He only does jury trials because this is the only place he even seems like a competent lawyer.  He likes to lean on the jury box, half wink at the moms and single ladies he's loaded the jury with.  He's already used a couple of sports analogies to win over the sports guys.  He put on a somber and serious face so the ex-cop in the jury knew that he's serious and he really understands life.  When he thinks he's got them, he sits down and writes out a funny scene between two men in quicksand on the back of his case files.  He decides to overrule something just so he looks interested.

FIREFIGHTER

James the Firefighter.  Why did he join up?  60 percent for sliding down the pole. 30 percent to ride the big red engine.  10 percent to smile at ladies in the grocery store while he's wearing his fireman togs.  He's the only one on his crew who calls them togs.  Let's see a typical fire with James.  There's James holding the firehose.  He likes the way the fire spills into any open space.  He kind of lets go of the terror and seriousness of the scene and thinks about how the char is like a reverse snowflake.  How the fire is an insatiable hunger, how it would eat everything its hot hands could reach.  Or maybe its insatiable thirst, how only enough water or rain can ever make it sleep.  He reaches for a pen to jot this down and the hose bucks in his hands, spraying all the onlookers.

RACE CAR DRIVER

Nope, I would die. Straight up day dream myself right into a mega flip and keep on going right into the afterlife.

Painting from here.

Decisions and Other Bad Words

Once again, I did not finish my 30 day project. This was by design.

I have way too much on my plate.

This is what I fear to be: Jack of all Trades, Master of None.

I actually have this phrase consistently stuck in my head. I find myself trying to do too much. Take on too many types of artistic endeavors.

Sometimes I get too involved with improv. And I think, "Yeah, this is what I want to do. Improv." But then I read a book of poetry and realize how much I miss it.

Then I'll act in something and think about that. Then I'll think about being a teacher only or I'll think about only writing plays or whatever. Sometimes I'm a goldfish.

I was going to list goals for the rest of this year. Things that I'm trying to accomplish but they sound so pretentious. So big.

I'll keep them to myself for now. Maybe I'll post them when I finish them.

Sometimes you just need some time.

Day 8 - Zuihitsu Day 2

I keep on keeping on. I think I'm a day behind now. I will post two poems tomorrow. Make up. Because I want to post during the day. But I've been getting home late. Because I'm so popular. Among poplars. I hang out with trees. I'm tired. I have weird jokes this late.

Here's another part of my zuihitsu. It's a journal essentially. Which is a thing i don't really keep. But then I fill up tons of moleskines with writing so what I am doing? I was thinking about this as I was writing this.


No World But This – Zuihitsu Day 2

If I never feared mortality,
if I never feared man or war
I could be a mountain, moving alive
time would spin away from me
all persons becoming cut flowers

~*~

I could sleep a century
I could keep a century alive
I could keep a country life
I could sleep a country’s life

~*~
I remember being young
saying things I thought were new,
as if I had peered into the world
and found a new vein of silver
thought that no one else had plumbed
I told a girlfriend that “Hate was not the opposite of Love,
but Indifference is.”
I was so impressed with myself
I told this to her Mom as well
and she nodded, a mother’s nod
to a toddler holding up an object
and saying, “red”, “ball”, “play”

later, I learned I was not new
I was walking in deep ruts of thought
I have not said anything original
yet

~*~
this mash? this bog of pulp and ink?
in Sunday School they told us to journal
but I chronicle nothing here, no day, no significance
I only write poetry and half poetry and bad awfulness
I will not ever call poetry
and sometimes dialogue between a fictional person or three
maybe a comedy bit I’m working out,
but a journal? can’t be

who would read this?
progeny? (I haven’t made any)
peers? I’d be mortified to show them

~*~
I’ve forgotten how to edit
my poems emerge as big as my life
1:1 scale
as I walk, sometimes I write I walk
uglier words hang on
like love handles, plantar’s warts, eczema
things I should treat, freeze off
but I get too caught up in sunsets
stare off and forget the form
between my hands
Or I’m busy digging for winter signs,
a raw November, where I will not rake again
this white page will snow over my mistakes
the rustling clauses beneath, of thoughts
broke off but wrote
but rote
but written
but rid of
I am sorry there is so much
for you to get through
sometimes I just keep castling
on top of this swamp
as deep as the walls are tall

How I Lost the Ability to Talk

Somewhere I found a work habit. It seemed all I needed was a schedule. And Valerie. And once I had both those things, I was able to sit down and write. Everyday. I now sit down and write whenever I can. Any free moment.

I've always had my fingers in too many honey pots. Always trying to tackle more than I can. Poetry, plays, songs, film, essays, children's lit. I find myself always wanting the thing I'm not writing currently. When I'm writing poetry, I'm thinking of comedy. When I'm writing laughs, I'm dreaming of metaphor.

It's not an unhappy thing. It's just the way I'm wired. Comedy and poetry are a lot closer than you think. I'll explain sometime.

But now that I spend so much time writing, and filming, I have nothing else on my mind. I fixate on the ephemeral, on the unwritten, the undone. My mind is a constant problem solving machine for my current writing projects.

This is my head on any given day:
"How do I write the story of Kevin's accident without being oversentimental?"
"How are math and death the same?"
"If I want this character to sound more noir, how do I keep this modern joke?"
"Why do I hate topical humor so much?"

And somewhere along the way, I've lost the ability to speak. About normal things. About things that are not my projects.

People ask me how I'm doing and I tell them WHAT I'm doing. People ask me banal questions like, "How was your weekend?" (Like someone just did three minutes ago.) And I answer, "Good. I met with this friend to direct a project and had this other screening thing to go to." (Like I just did two and a half minutes ago.) Not: "It was a good weekend. Kind of busy." Like normal people.

It's become bad. Valerie and I have talked about it. I'm so far inside my head that I really have to consciously make myself step out. I practiced at a party this saturday. Not talking about anything I'm doing. Chatting up random people about anything besides my projects.

Now I'm going to go edit this new web series I'm working on. And I'm planning to finish my 30 days project. Or start anew. Because I've started it twice and never finished. (Here's the funny thing. Even as I started writing this paragraph I realized that I'm essentially doing the same thing. But I wrote it anyway. Because this is what I am.)

Maybe I'll just go home and watch a movie. Tell someone what I liked about it. Like normal sauce.