I’ve made some nice progress on the Just A Geek rewrite. I’m up to chapter eight as of this morning. It’s the chapter where Aunt Val dies, and I’ve already had to stop twice because it makes me cry. I don’t know why, but I’ve missed Aunt Val more in the last two weeks than in the whole two years she’s been gone. Anne and I watched “Dead Like Me” night before last, and during a scene in a cemetery I was overcome with sadness and cried. Hard. I just saw this crane shot of all those tombstones, and I thought, “Man, I really miss Aunt Val,” as this thing in my chest turned and knotted and exploded with grief. It was weird.
I worked for about 90 minutes on Tuesday (maybe it was closer to two hours, I’m not sure) heavily editing Chapter 6, “Slow Emotion Replay.” I tried a new direction: there are some weblog entries that can stand on their own, but others are better if they’re cut up, and incorporated into the narrative. I like the format of a little narrative, followed by a weblog entry, then some “behind the scenes” info . . . but I honestly think it would be better if I rewrote the whole thing, and folded the weblog entries into the narrative. I sent two copies of Chapter Six to Andrew for comments, one old version and one rewrite. He agreed that the weblog entries are a vital part of the story, but the way they’re included right now, it sort of breaks up the “flow” of the story, and he liked the new direction. If I made it more of a straight forward story, it would flow better. It would also be a substantially different book than the one I’ve been working on for over almost a year. Hrm. It’s something to seriously think about.
Yesterday was Anne’s day off, so I didn’t write much at all. Instead, we spent the morning running errands and had lunch down at Barney’s in Old Town. I’m gonna get onto their Beer Bragger’s Board someday. Mark my words.

Reasons I love October:

• Baseball post-season
• Punkin Ice cream
• Punkin pancakes
• Punkin ale
• Halloween!
• Halloween Haunt at Knott’s
• Autumn gets started in Los Angeles
• Hockey starts

It’s the belt buckle that’s sweeping the nation.
(thanks to Andrew, who found this!)

The original idea behind Just A Geek was to simply chronicle one year at WWdN. It was little more than a cut-n-paste job, intended to provide an “offline” version of this website. But the weblog entries looked weird on their own, so I wrote some “behind the scenes” narrative to tie them together, and and honest-to-goodness Journey emerged. Over the course of that year, I went from struggling actor, plagued by deamons of self-doubt to . . . well . . . Just A Geek, I guess. I’m up to page 70 on the current re-write (not bad for three days of work), and it’s going pretty well, so far. I removed some really awful passive-voice stuff from my narrative, and I cleaned up some sections that have bothered me for months. There’s still a long way for me to go, but I’ve cleared the first checkpoint.
The format of JAG is quite different from Dancing Barefoot. While Barefoot (heh. I LOVE calling it that!) is five short stories, Geek (double heh) is more of a documentary. While I’ve been working on JAG the past few days, I’ve given serious thought to re-writing the whole thing from the beginning, and making it less of a documentary, and more of a narrative. That would involve cutting up the weblog entries, though, and incorporating them into newly-written stuff . . . and would probably mean that the book wouldn’t be done for another several months.
I ran that idea past my editor, Andrew, and he thought that it was just a delaying tactic, because I’m so terrified about releasing this second book. I think he’s right, and for now I will leave the formatting alone, and focus on making it better.
I suffer from a tremendous lack of discipline, so if I’m ever going to finish this book, I have to give myself a very strict schedule and stick to it. I find that I can write for about three hours before I fall apart, so the schedule is currently: get up at 8, write until around 12, and spend two hours handling book orders and other administrative stuff for Monolith and WWdN. Then, before the kids get out of school, I “relax” by working on this apache server I’ve gotten to run on my desk over there. I even installed postnuke on it, and got it to work on the first try! I have no idea what I’ll do with it . . . but it’s there. Maybe I’ll get to work on qmail next.
Oh, some readers have pointed out to me that the formatting on this page is wonky at certain resolutions, and you have to side-scroll. Side-scrolling makes the baby Jesus cry, but I can’t figure out what I did to screw it up. If any of you htmlgods want to look at the source and point me to a solution, I’m sure a lot of people would thank you.
Update: I may have fixed it. Look at this. And in celebration of maybe fixxoring the stupid side-scrolling, I offer this.

I had such a great weekend! The kids were with their dad, so Anne and I got to have two “date nights” in a row.
Friday night, we went to old town for dinner at the recently-opened Pasadena Brewing Company. The service really needs work, but the food was awesome. I had this stuffed cheeseburger thing that was delicious. It’s hard to improve upon the basic cheeseburger model, but they have done a fine job over there.
During the day onSaturday, I spent some time handling book orders, and mowed the lawn. I have reached the conclusion that I love mowing my lawn. I put on my iPod, and I really take my time. It’s almost a meditation for me, to slowly push my lawnmower across the grass, as I cut my lawn to look like an outfield. Saturday night, Anne and I went out to Sixspace to see Shepard Fairey’s new show “This is Your God,” (it is AMAZING). We had to leave early, though, so we could make our dinner reservation at Amalfi, which is the new restaurant next door to ACME in Hollywood. After dinner, we went to the Bad Taste Show at ACME. I didn’t write for this current show, but after watching it, I’m totally writing for the next one. It is filled with sketches that we’re just not supposed to do: sketches that are really gross, heavily sexual, and incredibly offensive. If you’re even the tiniest bit twisted, you’ll love this show.
Sunday, we went to my brother’s new house for dinner. It was crazy, man, to stand in Jeremy’s living room, and think, My god. My little brother owns his own house! I’m really proud of him and his wife. They’ve made a fantastic life for themselves.