Star Struck

My dad called me this morning to tell me that he had recieved a surprise visitor in hid office last light. Holly Hunter, star of stage and screen, came into his office to view a presentation he gives when he teaches. She is researching for a role in TNT's upcoming series "Grace" in which she plays an Oklahoma City Police detective who kills someone in a car wreck. She has been spending her time with Detective Chris Cunningham, one of our very outstanding female detectives who brought her on a crime scene then to my old man's office. She interviewed him about all things police such as office pranks, women in police work, etc and watched about 3/4 of his presentation "Waking the Dead," a gruesome and gory presentation that she handles well "for a civilian."

It will be interesting to see what they do to my department on TNT.

Thawing...For Now

As you can see by the signs of water moving, we are beginning to thaw. But not so fast Evel Knievel. The three inches of ice on everything is melting slowly, which means that it's going to refreeze tonight. Plus, there is a 100% chance of snow on Saturday, with some snow possible Friday evening. Round three. Plus more may be on the way next weekend! Will it ever end?

Cops in a Snow Storm II

If you drink and drive and try to do donuts around a snow plow, you may end up like this... in a very deep ditch with no hope of rescuse until firemen come to lift you out with a rope.

And then you'll end up with a line of policemen who have come to laugh at you. And with slurred speech you'll ask, "okay, who's supposed to arrest me?"

Frozen Armeggedon

Ice isn't like snow. I think in places where it snows, they don't understand this. I think this because they're always saying stupid crap like, "we get 7,000 feet of snow a year. You guys get one inch and it shuts your whole state down."

In an ice storm, no inch is left untouched. All the rock salt in the world does nothing because the ice just melts only to instantly refreeze. And the ground isn't covered with a soft, pure white blanket, but rather a close, hard layer of gray. Ice makes everything the same color. The ground is gray, the trees are gray, the sky is gray. And at night, the lights of civilization bounce back and forth between the clouds and the ice, making the nighttime the same color as the day. Last night brought to mind a scene from Beckett's Endgame.

C: Never seen anything like that.
H: What? A sail, a fin? Smoke?
C: The light is sunk.
H: Pah! We all knew that.
C: There was a little bit left.
H: The base?
C: Yes.
H: And now?
C: All gone.
...
H: And the sun?
C: Zero.
H:But it should be sinking. Look again.
C: Damn the sun!
H: Is it night already then?
C: No.
H: Well what is it?
C: Gray.

Stay With Chicken Little. We'll Keep You Advised

Mention Ice and this is what Walmart looks like. It's time to run out and horde people! Charissa took this picture with her cell phone. She said that there was no milk, juice, apples, sandwich bread, lunch meat, or twinkies! Oh Help us! No Twinkies!!!

Murder-Rapture: A Play Written in Four Days

As a writing experiment, I have cloistered myself in my house for the better part of four days to see if I could compose a full length play by January 15th. It is of note that I have written many many plays but have yet to actually complete a full one (a play is considered full length at 90-110 pages).

This was a two part experiment 1) To see if the shirt time span would make it easier to actually complete the thing without running out of gas and 2) To see what the shirt time span would do with the stream of conscience within the play itself. These two things are difficult to analyze because in the case of the first, I don't really know if the time span had anything to do with being able to complete the play, or if I finally found the right combination of plot elements to keep a play alive for two hours. The second is difficult because a writer must be removed from a play before he can objectively analyze it or he must have a trusted person who knows what they are talking about analyze it for him.

Since you don't care about the logistics of playwriting, I'll just tell you what it's about. Two men stumble into becoming the most prolific serial killers in history. Then one of them falls in love. Dark hilarity ensues. By the final scene, there are so many bodies stashed in the basement of this house that they are overflowing onto the stage floor and the audience learns that there is no life left in the whole town where the play takes place.

I am going to enter the play into Jewel Box's play contest, even if it is still need of revision by the 15th... just to see what happens. I desperately want to accept the award at their banquet and say, "thank you so much. I wrote this in four days." The prize money would also pay for nearly half a semester's tuition.

I am the Biggest Nerd Ever!

My nerdiness is clear in the marvelous Christmas I had this year. Among my gifts were the entire Beckett in Film series (the nineteen plays of Samuel Beckett all on film), An Oxford American Writer's Thesaurus, An Interlinear Greek/Hebrew/English Bible, and a seemingly endless supply of Barnes and Noble gift cards. One present, however, didn't arrive in time for Christmas so I got only a picture of it wrapped in a box. Today, finally, I received via US Postal Service, the Barnhart Concise Dictionary of Etymology.

It's nerdy enough that I know what the word "Etymology" means. It's even more nerdy that I can spell it without looking it up. But what's nerdiest of all was the excitement I expressed when I finally got it in the mail. Knowing what it was, I tore it open with no regard for the box in which it came. I threw the packing peanuts all over the house, took the book out, and ran through the living room shouting, "Woo Hoo!"

I then hung my head in shame. How have I come to this? I watch baseball and lift weights. I am a tough, mean cop. How can I be such an awful nerd. Oh well, the shame has passed, I will now sit down and enjoy my 916 pages of the origins of American English.