If you are in my off-location (read: non-Richmond) cast, you will have a first draft of your part of the script by tomorrow (Tuesday), 7:00P EST. And then on Wednesday, I am either going to give you the final draft of your part of the script or say, "Forget this. Just record that stupid first draft, because I just don't have the time." And then you will hopefully record your bit of the script by this weekend on either a cassette tape or as some sort of computer audio file -- I really care not which -- and then send it to me. If I am really on the ball, I will have vague suggestions of the style in which to read it, although my main suggestion, as always, is to read it as naturally as possible. (That does not hold true for number 11, for reasons you shall understand later.)

I am being good. I am setting deadlines for myself. I am going to get this done.

I have less than three weeks to get my butt geared and finish up this movie. (I am submitting my movie here, as well. Maybe.) Anyway, the film is now called "12 Stories About Eileen," the name change more suggestive of the story that I am subverting. (That is all I shall say on that subject.) I am now in the process of putting people into the 13 roles, and so here is where I am at.

1) E.'s Family Friend, Johnny Benson: Mv. Prins (written and sent)
2) E.'s Younger Sister, Marie Forest: K. Prins (written and sent)
3) E.'s Older Sister, Samantha Clark: S. Prins (written and sent)
4a) E.'s Piano Student, Amelia White: D. Gray (written and sent)
4b) E's Piano Student, Ken Johnson: P. Smith (written and sent)
5) E.'s Church Friend, Jeffrey Winthrop: A. Klages (written and sent)
6) E.'s Daughter's Friend, Mindy Carter: someone who can read two sentences (written)
7) E.'s Niece -- about 10, on-camera, must be of reading age: L. Neuman: a little old, but
8) E.'s Sunday School Student -- in teens, on- or off-camera: K. Marrefi
9) E.'s Sunday School Student -- in teens, on-camera: Jo[h]n, if he wants it
10) E.'s Boss, David Benedict: S. Griffin (written and sent)
11) E.'s Friend, Chris Samuels -- at least in 20s, must be on-camera: Mt. Prins
12) E.'s Daughter, Gretchen Clark -- 17, on-camera preferred: no one, yet (written)

Anyway, I need to fill in spots. Help. Ideas.

---
The competition in my mind.
Last Saturday, as you will recall, I finished a blazing ninth-from-last among the 40 or so people in my novice running group. This week -- despite falling behind all the way to second-to-last at about the one-mile marker because of a very intentional intent to pace myself better -- I ended up a scorching 11th-from-last, a good 20 seconds ahead of 10th-from-last. This is good.

It has only been one week, I will admit, but I have so far managed to stay slightly ahead of the Monument Avenue 10K schedule, with a total jog/walk distance over the past week of 10K in three days (rather than the 8K required). And I've had two 30-35 minute rides on my exercise bike in that same time period, meaning that this was the first seven day cycle since, um, since I have no idea when, probably since high school, where I have met the suggestion by Koop et al. of 30 minutes of aerobic exercise five days a week. I would say the requisite "Yay me," but that will only jinx it. So, um, yay Dr. Koop.

Secrets of Industry -- Revealed!
Secret #2: Make sure that your product has adequate caution labels. For example, yesterday I installed this Standard Underdesk Keyboard Manager for one of my colleagues at the office. Look at it. Does it not look like it would be comfy to set your cute butt upon? That is what I thought, and I was nearly ready to take a rest upon it when I saw the instruction sheet. "CAUTION," it said in bold capital letters, "This unit is not meant to be sat upon." Whew! Thank you, Fellowes, Inc., for saving my life!

Shut up.
Some of you are asking about the screenplay -- can we read it, how many of the 12 stories are done, is it less snotcrap than the previous, etc. To you I say: Wait. Or something slightly meaner; I can't recall what my intent was. Anyway.

More than any film of 2002, the conclusion of M. Night Shyamalan's Signs -- just out on video and DVD -- requires a re-examination of the two hours of celluloid that flickered before. This ought to be no surprise to those familiar with Mr. Shyamalan’s first major film, The Sixth Sense, where the sly director cloaks the most important piece of information about Bruce Willis until the final scene. But Signs’ ending is even more subversive: Rather than force the audience to scrutinize characters’ interactions with each other, it instead compels them to reconsider the hero’s relationship with his God.

Mr. Shyamalan successfully hides his thesis -- that God is a predeterministic God, unremittingly fiddling with the dials of the universe to bring back that one lost sheep of 100 -- until he’s good and ready to reveal it. Signs starts as War of the Worlds with a static, one-family P.O.V: Mel Gibson is Graham, an Episcopal priest who's lost his faith after the death of his wife. Crop circles appear on his farm and across the world. The cause: Aliens. (One of Mr. Shyamalan’s best decisions was to have much of the alien sighting and paranoia shown through Graham and his family watching television, just as most of the world would see a [relatively] small-scale alien attack.) The aliens attack the areas near the crop circles and then, of course, eventually come to attack Graham and his family. And then, and then, and then...

I must say no more about that finale. I loved and was shocked by the ending of Signs — the most out-of-left-field ending in a film since frogs fell from the sky in 1999's Magnolia — and so I do not then intend to ruin the denouement for unprepared readers. (That said, those who wish to know no more about Signs should read no further.) Needless to say, God had an explicit hand in Graham’s family’s victory over the mean ol’ aliens, and the specific way that God gave Graham the victory over the aliens returned his faith in Him. But it goes much further than that: In a twist that recalls a religious version of 1997’s The Game, Mr. Shyamalan implies that virtually every action, quirk, and event that takes place during the timeframe of the movie -- and some before -- took place for the singular reason of returning Graham’s faith. The alien attack, Graham’s brother’s minor-league baseball career, Graham’s daughter’s refusal to drink a full glass of water, his wife’s last words: If you believe Mr. Shyamalan at face value, all of it set in motion by a God who wants nothing more than Graham’s redemption.

But one must choose either to not believe Mr. Shyamalan at face value or to conclude that Mr. Shyamalan needs to rethink his religious beliefs. It is not ridiculous to believe that God would influence certain actions to help return Graham’s belief in Him. It is ridiculous, however, to believe that God would put the entire world in jeopardy for the sake of one ex-believer, which is precisely the scenario played out in Signs. (God might leave the 99 to save the one, but it’s a bit harder to imagine Him leaving the 6,300,000,000 to save the one.) The beauty of Mr. Shyamalan’s microscopic look at the world is one can imagine the alien invasion having a positive impact elsewhere in the world, too: Bringing together divorced couples, saving children from drowning, starting new line-dance crazes. But that’s simply conjecture: There’s nothing in the text of the film that implies a net positive gain from the invasion, and much that implies death and destruction. Surely God could have a better plan to save Graham’s soul than that.

Better, then, to view Signs as allegory: As long as you jive with Mr. Shyamalan’s belief that there is a God and that He is behind certain “coincidences” -- and I do -- then the ending works on a preposterous yet giddy level. It’s absurd, yes, but knowingly so and lovably so. And the film is otherwise so accomplished -- one of the best of 2002 -- that whatever theological qualms I have about the ending are more than overcome by Mr. Shyamalan’s visual bravado and narrative knack. It’s a thinking person’s movie. Just don’t think too much about it.

[to be published in the Spring Hill Review for, oh, I guess February 2003.]

Hi. Why did not one of you say what a piece of snotcrap my current screenplay is when it is? I believe it is because you all secretly hate me and want me to try to make a film out of this snotcrap script and then look foolish in front of everyone who sees it. That is what I believe. Well, ha! Your plan has not worked! I am now ditching that screenplay for the much better screenplay that is going to be titled "Twelve Stories about Rhonda." It will be the best short film ever, and I will be famous, and I will be rich, and I will give none of my money to any of you except Kim because, well, I have to give some to her by law because Virginia is a community property state.

I have almost two hours between the time when I leave work and when I have to be at bell practice. In that time, I want to have at least six of my stories written. Also, I need at least twelve volunteers from my friends -- and you all are my friends, yes? -- to read some of the stories as a first-person narrator. What you need to do this is to have a quality microphone and a naturalistic speaking style. What you do not need is to be on camera, at least not all of y'all. You will be in the closing credits. Please tell me if you want to do this.

Last night, I had the most vivid dream that I have had in many-a-month. It was night. I was driving with Kim in my Accord down by Willow Lawn Mall in Richmond, and all of a sudden the car went kuh-thump. Kuh-thump. And then it started kuh-thumping more and more until I thought that it would be a good idea to stop the car. It had four flat tires.² Kim told me to get the spares out of the trunk. I open the trunk, and there are three spare tires in it, not including what is in the spare-tire cubby underneath the regular trunk space. I take out the three tires, and I look in the little cubby for the fourth, and the cubby is empty. There is no fourth spare tire. I tell this to Kimberly, and she says, "F**k."² Questioningly, I say, "F**k?" She says, "F**k, f**k, f**k."³. Then I decide that it is better for the car to drive on four flat tires than to replace one of them, so I leave all three spares on the ground and drive on completely empty, four-lane Broad Street to the nearest Merchant's Tire and Auto⁴. The lights are on, there are people inside, and so I go up to the counter and say, "I would like to replace all four of my tires please." The man at the counter says, "I'm sorry, but the store is closed. We're just hanging out here for the fun of it." Kim says, well, um, anyway, Kim gets angry, and then I say, "But why would you be hanging out here? That doesn't make sense." And that's the end of the dream.

---
I am obnoxious.
I was at Catholic inquiry⁵ last night, and here is a segment of the discussion:

Me: [I am responding to a comment about Christian leadership.] The problem with saying, "Oh, here's a good, smart Christian leader, so he knows a lot about God," is that there are many religious leaders --good, smart, God-loving religious leaders -- and for even the Christian ones, their views on Biblical issues are all over the place: On communion, on baptism...

Leader: Oh, I don't know how true that is. I see Billy Graham on television, for example, and I don't know that there's anything that he says that I disagree with.

Me: Well, yeah, okay, because he's talking to a broad Christian audience, but don't you think that in his personal beliefs that there are some big differences between him and you?

Leader: Not really, no.

Me: You think Billy Graham is a transubstantiationist?

Leader: Well, I'm, I would say that there's not that much difference between he and I on the Eucharist, no.

Me: [somewhat excitedly] Not to be antagonistic⁶, but then why don't you let me and him take communion?

[Uncomfortable pause.]

Leader: Do you want to take communion?

Me: No, but that isn't the point...

Anyway, I very clearly lied when I said that I did not want to be antagonistic, because I obviously did, and I do sometimes want to antagonize when it comes to Catholicism, because I don't think I'll even approaching thinking about perhaps considering starting the conversion process maybe without some getting in people's faces and people getting into mine. Because this is what the whole thing boils down to: I have not seen a compelling case for me to convert. And frankly, I don't think I'll ever see a compelling reason to switch teams until Catholics trying to convince me become a little antagonistic themselves, dissin' the non-Catholic church as "weak" and "choose-your-own-religion" and such. As Kim says, I have it all right now: I get the perks of being Catholic (other than communion) without that pesky conversion bit.

That said, today I've had the strongest urge to go to a Protestant service that I've had since being married. Being obnoxious in a vaguely anti-Catholic way has, oh, I don't know what it's done. Something.

---
Very Interesting House Hunting Update, Installment Four.
We bought a house⁷. Have a nice day!

---
1 I should point out that the Accord had its second flat tire last week, which no doubt explains the existence of this part of the dream.

2 For those who do not know Kimberly well: This word is three times more harsh than any word she has ever spoken, at least in my presence.

3 You are seeing now why I remember this dream.

4 The same one I went to for my second flat tire (as discussed in footnote 1).

5 Inquiry is where one learns about Catholicism without that pesky part of them explicitly trying to convert one⁸.

6 Obviously, this conversation is somewhat paraphrased, but that clause is verbatim.

7 It was 30 months ago, but still.

8 I hate not using second-person when it is not appropriate.

I am in the James River Ringers. And I have signed up for the YMCA 10-week 10K run preparation (which, supposedly, will enable me to run the whole 10K, which strikes me as unlikely, but whatever). So lethargy's butt is currently being kicked. Yay me.

---
"And if things had gone differently for me tonight then I probably wouldn't be saying any of this. I grant you everything. But give me this: he personifies everything that you've been fighting against. And I'm in love with you. How do you like that? I buried the lede."
Stupid Beth-Annie and her stupid me-esque cleverness.

---
I am ambitious (yellow)¹.
I am half-tempted to try to replace my computer's working motherboard and processor with a faster one all by myself (by which I mean with Edward's help, of course). It will cost maybe $70, and so (and this is note to Kim) maybe I will return some of my purchases and purchase a new motherboard instead.

---
I need actors and actresses.
On the weekend of January 25th, I want to start and come close to finishing principal photography on Untitled Tree Movie. But I do not have the six actors and actresses I need. I have one of them: me, who plays a disc golfer who hits his disc into a tree and says, "Ugh! That tree moved right in front of my disc!" One is not enough actors to make my entire movie, I think.

---
Contest.
2003 contests start next Tuesday. 2002 prices will be handed out and sent to the top 10 individuals this week.

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1 I am going to start adding more jokes to this journal that no one but me gets.

For about 17 different reasons -- my camcorder should be coming today, I have two music reviews to write for Wednesday, I have James River Ringer auditions tomorrow, I have to finish putting together a foosball table -- do not expect much writing until Thursday. That said, five things must be mentioned.

1) I need ideas for my movie that are do-able with very few actors and very little money.
2) Today is last day for the final contest, and I am wondering: Are Beth-Annie and Ed going to bow out and allow Kimberly a chance to win? It does seem that way.
3-5) I only had two things that needed to be mentioned. I am a liar.

This is for twenty points. One point per question. You may not change your answer. If the comments are not working, you may e-mail answers to mdprins@yahoo.com. Right-hand points are up-to-date (including these; Beth-Annie got numbers 1 and 4, Alex got numbers 3 and 6, and moM and Alex split number 8). This is it. Yay future winner. Boo all you losers who will not win because you are not lovely enough. You have until Monday, January 5th, and then no more points will be counted for 2002.

1) The number of AIM buddies I have.