W2 - Wendy to the Second Power

It's the kind of crazy hot day that makes me glad I have several creative projects so need to stay in!

But first, I had to get some socialization out of the way, so I just met with my progressive (as in, politics) ladies for lunch at the newest Madam Maam's. They turned the Shanghai River place at The Village (where goulo made me eat too many times because it had a vegetarian buffet and was steps from the Alamo Drafthouse) into the more upscale and tastier MM's.

Speaking of the letter M, also at the lunch was my friend MimiM, whom I had lost touch with. I saw her at a lunch months ago, but this time we talked for a long time. She's in line for a PR job in a FEMA deployment. My buddy NancyM also does those FEMA assignments, and loves them. Feels like she's making the nation a better place, helping her fellow man, and getting to live away from Austin for awhile.

Ever since a Chicago Chinese dinner four years ago, I've been questing for a place that makes Egg Fu Yung. Yeah, yeah, I understand it's a "fake" regional dish that was mocked up for American palates. But the dish in the Chicago place was killer. I've been so disappointed when I asked around Austin; nobody here did it and they made a face that I even asked.

Imagine my surprise when I see that Madam Maam's has a "Thai omelette" made with eggs, crispy noodles, onions, pork, etc. Mmmmmmmmm (to belabor the M), it was a wonderful comparison to the Chicago dish. Not the same, but equally as good. Everybody's meals looked yummy -- and HUGE! Tons o' food!

Then leaving the restaurant at 1:30, I melted from the sun frying everything. OMG. But I'm buying an assortment of gifts for Leslie's b'day. The theme: body care products. (She's been on a strict diet and cleansing for 14 months.) I still had shopping to do, including a sweaty hike through The Domain. But I got various fun and cool (and, in the case of Origins, $$$) gifts. The big gift is a spa detox wrap session at the gym we both go to.

Oh, and I found vetiver and cedar soap (French-made) for myself while shopping. The spicy, woody scent of vetiver sends me into a hypnotic state. So....

Shopping WIN

Deodorant FAIL

Ooh, one of the guys who took the Michael Hauge Story Mastery workshop with me found a good page on Mike's site that lays out his screenplay structure and gives examples from good scripts.

http://www.screenplaymastery.com/structure.htm

So this morning I rendezvoused with NC, who is a long-time water baby, and went with her to her special nook at City Park, aka Emma Long Metro Park. This is a 10-15 mimute drive out of Austin where you can find balmy breezes and chilly lake water despite the 100+ degree days. I hadn't been swimming since the fun at Julie's lake last June, so it was nice! Crowded with hotdogging boaters and jet skis, but refreshing water and a sandy shoal.

My goal was to get some sun, albeit under layers of SPC 30 sun block, and get used to my snorkel gear. I did successfully get sun (we were out from 11am to 2:30 pm, but I was reading in the shady grass when I wasn't in the water) and yet didn't get a burn. Perfect! And then NC had to talk me through my strong claustrophobic aversion to putting on a dive mask and breathing through a snorkel. Even though my mask has prescription lenses so I can see, oooh, I hate that stuff all up and around my face. I got to the point where I was floating, paddling, face down, breathing (panting!) through the snorkel. I realize it's all in my head, and am counting on what the trainers say, that you get used to the mouth breathing and mask after about 5 minutes. The Lake Austin water was green and murky, but when I get to Hawaii in August, I'm planning to get lots of time looking at tropical fish and reefs.

Tonight it's a monthly Dream Study meeting, so I'll get my spiritual fix from that. Tomorrow is mostly about novel writing and reading screenplays down at Austin Film Festival. Plus deciding Y/N on going downtown with friends for the fireworks. It's hot hot hot here, so that's hard to get enthusiasm for...

Man, the screenwriter and story mastery workshop with Michael Hauge went off wonderfully this weekend. He can really cram a lot of education into a single day! The members of the Austin Screenwriters Group really need a hardcore course in structure, too. It's where everybody sort of flails around...

Even me! I'd assumed that my many scripts and many workshops, and, heck, teaching story structure in informal classes for UT, would make me pretty experienced. But nope. When we who'd submitted our story descriptions and first scenes got discussed during class time, I had 10 minutes of explaining and justifying, and it didn't fix my main problem.

NOW I discover a screenplay really needs a finish line/final goal. Not to achieve a final (good) state, but an actual Something. I'd had that in my 2nd screenplay (THE CUNNING MAN) that did so well in Nicholl's and other contests. But I realize now it's not that final oomph thing in many of my other scripts. Dang. So I'm working on it, and Mike was nice enough to read another pass at my story template when I took him back to the airport yesterday.

Another wonderful event this weekend was going to the home of Peggy Schatz in Spicewood for the informal potluck party with Mike Hauge. OMG, what a gorgeous home! Full of art and antigues, but with casual Texas elegance. It's landscaped and set in trees, out in the Texas Hill Country. She even has a German farmhouse they renovated as a guesthouse. That's where Mike stayed (saved us the cost of a hotel, yo). She grilled a mess of fajitas, so it was all lovely.

So for my weekend: WORKSHOP WIN! Here's Mike objecting to the camera in the room:

Screenplay consultant and best-selling author Michael Hauge is coming to Austin Saturday to do a workshop on story mastery. Know why? Because I ASKED HIM TO. I coordinate these things because I get to have very cool conversations with important Hollywood people, yo!

It's gonna be very cool to workshop with Mike again (like I did in San Diego in 2007), and it was supportive of the Austin Screenwriters' Group to let me invite Mike as an official ASG workshop.

But dang, I've been project managing my head off for this. It's a bigger deal and costs more than the events we've done in the past. So there are about a dozen people all volunteering or contributing something toward the event. Very generous of us all, since nobody (but Mike) is getting paid for any of this. But you gotta admire the spirit of cooperation that's gotten us this far!

Right now I've got 5 boxes of his books and DVDs. I went to the Oak Hill Methodist Church yesterday and viewed the room and got the key. I've sent out 15-20 emails coordinating. I've promoted to all the major writing groups in Austin. I put up the Web page onto our ASG site. I just went to HEB today and bought still water, sparkling water, coffee of all types, Diet Coke and Dr. Pepper, granola bars, etc. I'll get fresh donuts on the way to the event Saturday morning. I figure, with a price of $95/$125, we should have some drinks and snacks for the folks.

The good thing is, we needed 17-18 people to break even, and we have 30 or so. Yay! It was a gamble and it paid off financially. Now looking for the day to come and all the stuff to work out... Then Saturday evening, PeggyS is hosting a potluck BYOB social at her home for all to hang out with Mike!

I have time between now and August 1 to read 100 or so screenplays. Sure I do.

That's the plan anyway. I went ahead and met with Alex, the new coordinator of the Austin Film Festival's screenplay contest, on Friday. I also want to write the first chapter of my supernatural mystery novel, PINKY BLACK AND THE BITERS, and enter it into the Hawaii Writers Conference competition. That's due August 15. That would give me a little something more to possibly network on when I'm there for 11 days in August!

But back to this summer. I am a fast script reader -- can do a 100-page script in about an hour and make the notes on it in 5-10 minutes. Alex wants me to read first round. I almost turned up my nose; I was considered by most of the previous coordinators to be one of the best 2nd-round judges they had. But then I checked myself. You only have to read 30 pages in first round if the story is crap. That can make a lot of difference and go a lot faster! And I want to earn my Producers Pass by reading, since my fond hopes of getting in free for being a finalist have hit a roadbump.

Roadbump! I learned Alex is doing categorizing differently than the past, which gave me a sinking, "Oh, I'm screwed" feeling about the CAN'T SAY NO script I killed myself to entry on the last day. I wrote it knowing the failings of comedy scripts in that contest, that often they don't have jokes, or only one every 10 pages. As a reader you think "this is supposed to be comedy?" I wrote my script to have 3 jokes on every page for like the first third of the script. Bam bam bam! Then there's at least one joke on each page there after, but the zany plot complications take over and keep the comedic tone.

As I entered it, I remembered there's a Scifi sub-contest too, where if your script is SF/F/H and gets to the finals, some high-ranking producers in Hollywood might read it as well. So I paid the extra $20 for that. In years past, you'd go into the Comedy or Drama stack. This year, Alex made a Comedy, Drama and Scifi stack. I think my script will do well for jokes, but it's only science fiction/fantasy in the way that THE ABSENT MINDED PROFESSOR or LOVE POTION NUMBER 9 are SF/F... dang. My first round reader might kill it entirely!

Because I'd protested my taxes before, I knew to come to the Travis County Tax Assessor's office ready. It's a stuffy, crowded space and they make you wait even when you have a scheduled pre-hearing. So, a light, summery dress, sandals and a book. Sure enough, there were about 30 people crammed in a hallway and my hearing was 45 min late.

The young man was nice who reviewed my case. When I explained I lived, not just on the edge, but at the corner/tip of a nice neighborhood with a fast drop-off in quality of homes behind and to the right of me, he allowed me to choose the streets for comparables. So that was easy to choose.

But then I noticed: all the sales he was showing me were from 2008. June, July, August. The most recent was Sep 2 2008. Maybe someone else wouldn't have noticed that, but the real estate market really started taking a dive in the fall. The prices now reflect the implosion finally getting to Austin.

So I asked for 2009 numbers. And he got a kind of odd look and said there weren't any. As in, no sales in my neighborhood in the past 8 months?? A day later and I now suspect that Travis CAD was chosing not to put the recent figures into their system on purpose, so they could argue the higher numbers.

I can't go for that. I'm doing the formal hearing next week. In the meantime, I've got to get a real estate agent to give me comparables from my neighborhood from the MLS database. The pre-hearing officer did offer to relook at my case if I emailed him something, but right now he only offered 3% less. As in, with Zillow showing N. Austin trended down by 16% in the past year, the tax appraisers will "only" raise my value by a positive 13%.

I love me some musical theater. And even though I couldn't finish Greg Maguire's novel on the alternate history of the Wicked Witch of the West, I'm intrigued that WICKED, the musical, is coming to Austin in August. (And if I'd made it to NYC anytime in the past 3 years, that's a Broadway play I would've seen.)

But not a lot of my friends will do musical theater. Plus I'll be in Hawaii (yay!) for a good part of the run of the musical here. I went ahead and got me a solo ticket, never bothering to do a survey of "who wants to go". And wouldn't you know it? J4 calls me yesterday saying she has a great idea for an outing! She's heard from her niecies how wonderful WICKED is (they go to NYC a lot when their virtual stepfather Butch Hancock plays there).

J4 got us both tickets on a different night. Now I'll either resell my solo ticket or maybe go to both performances!

Saw STAR TREK yesterday evening in Austin's only iMAX, so it was huge! A huge screen totally filled with those fights and space battles and ice you-know-whats. Man, blew my mind! I'd heard the visuals were good, and I really agree. The TV show, bless its corny heart, never did a single impressive effect. Goofy aliens, easily sussed tractor beaming, etc.

But this! Whoa Mama! The scary Romulan ship is actually scary! The space scenes are glorious. Even the dorky polyester costumes from the old days have been redone with better fitting, textured, comfy looking costumes still in the same style and colors.

The iMAX ticket is $14 ($12 + $2 service fee online, and you HAVE to buy in advance because the 400-person theater sells out every show, days in advance) compared to $8 for a regular theater. But it's totally worth it for big movies like this.

I liked lots of stuff about the movie. The origin tales could've been ho-hum, since we know so much about these characters. But they were fun, and the casting was fun. The Chekov kid didn't look like Walter Koenig, but he's truly of Russian descent and his accent was vicked gutt. (And I'd seen Anton Yelchin as a child actor and didn't realize he was Russian!) They made Uhara a real special character with top-notch hearing and linguistic abilities, which I liked, since she was so much like Kirk's executive secretary in the old TV show. Zoe Saldaba was fiery and I very much loved the sly covert relationship they put into this film that makes you look at the old TV show and think, hee, what could have been happening on the down-low!

Simon Pegg played Scotty as wild and briliant; though he didn't look like James Doohan, he was fun. "Capt'n, I'm givin' it all I got!" got cheers. Oh, they made Pegg wear dark contacts and dye his blond hair brown, but still... Chris Pine, the kid playing Kirk, was a big, arrogant, brawly mess, which fit pretty well with both the series and how William Shatner played the captain. Pine didn't... Pause! ... for... Dramatic!... effect in his speaking, and that was okay with me. Nobody can do that anymore ever without making it come off like a shout-out to Shatner. Loved Karl Urban (who I remember mostly as the main bad guy in CHRONICLES OF RIDDICK) getting the squint and dyspeptic dialogue of Dr. Leonard McCoy right.

And Zachary Quinto has that unusual face and dark hair, so he was a fun Spock in some ways. I'd heard he felt he was born to play the role, and indeed, they didn't consider anyone but him. Still, his performance was not as faithful as it needed to be. He didn't work very hard on the voice, I felt like. There's a clipped and dry way that Leonard Nimoy did his dialog, and Quinto was Vulcan-like but not Nimoy-like. And there were only two times he lifted one brow and it seemed like it strained him. Plus he's taller than Nimoy, and they weirdly let the two actors stand side-by-side in some scenes to show the discrepancy.

The origin plot was fun, but the contemporary menace was only so-so. We had a Romulan named Nero (?! too much baggage in human history!) who looked like the shave-headed tattooed bikers written up in INK magazine. He had a standard sort of sob story in his history that was driving him to do a series of obvious, even banal, acts in revenge for something he blamed unreasonably on one person, thus driving the plot. Plus there's a magical element used they don't even attempt to sci-fi up... Luckily for the fun of the movie, this stuff is secondary and you really get into how the characters interact to form the Enterprise we know and love.

Today is the official Wendy Birthday Day. But I've been celebrating with friends and family for almost a week now. Tonight, J4 took me to a new place called Olivia's on S. Lamar. Trendy place, delicious food (scallops!), and a waitron we knew from Hyde Park B&G too. Plus J4 gave me an Andrew Davies DVD of BRIDESHEAD REVISITED and President Obama's book. Cool!

Last Wednesday, Leslie took me to Eddie V's Edgewater Grill. We ate late (9 pm) and the usually crazy-busy place was not busy. Then she showered me with a dozen gifts, most of them lavendar related or purple, including a honking 3-carat tanzanite ring!

And I must've gotten 12-15 wishes via FaceBook and on my Writergrrls list. Very sweet messages too! So I'm feeling cherished.

And just for grins, here's a photo taken of me on my first natal anniversary. Fierce concentration in the face -- look, I had it even then!

That's also my very first pet, a cat! (How could it not be a cat?) She didn't have a name until she had kittens, then she was forever "Mama Cat." She lived a long time, liked me best, and had dozens and dozens of kittens that we gave to good homes.... Ha, I knew I was born with the pale, fine hair, but I see here it always had the cowlicks that give me fits unto this very day...