Out of Town Blogging
I'm in the middle of a vacation, which accounts for the slow/no pace of posts. Traveling does wonders for the mind and I've had tons of blog post ideas I was unable to put down because no access to a computer or blackberry and just the sheer pace of traveling/wedding/catching up with old friends doesn't leave much time to blog.

That said, I'll try to give a little round up. First, I didn't get a chance to respond to Jake or Sher's comments on various election posts, which I generally try to do. But I think I can respond to both at the same time because they each deal with the magnification of what I call "non-issues" in the campaign. The first is the rumor of Palin's book banning and the second is Obama's "sexist" remark. Both of these occurances strike me as tiny banalities of a campaign and the work of governing which are brought up and blown out of proportion to make the candidate look foolish or weak or bad in some way. And even if both or one or the other were deliberate and/or true - I just don't care that much. So Obama slips up and he's is subconciously sexist. Big deal. So what if Palin fantasizes about banning books? I fantasize about beating people up. What's the big deal? No one is perfect.

On an unrelated note, I had a thought about the logic of screenwriting and why I do it, despite the long shot odds of success. Mamet talks about in his book about writing screenplays is like playing the lottery - you have basically an equal chance of winning by finding a lottery ticket on the ground than actually playing the lottery to win. He's being hyperbolic, I think, and a poker metaphor is more accurate. It's like desparately staying in a poker hand for a straight or flush draw even though I've got a 10-15% chance of winning the hand. A smart player says - yes, fine, you've got a chance, but it's so small, it's not worth sticking it out. But there are situations where the pot-odds favor sticking in the hand. If you can win 20x the bet amount and you have only 10% odds of winning, despite your low odds, the payoff is so high, it's worth the risk. I think my approach to screenwriting mimics this poker situation. I know rationally, I probably won't make it. But I think I do have at least some chance of selling scripts and getting writing jobs and the potential payoff is so high, at least for now, it's still worth pursuing. These odds change the more successful I am at anything else or if I get married or have a family, where leisure time is more valuable.

On another unrelated note, I finally picked up Mike Davis' CITY OF QUARTZ, a book I've been recommended many times by smart people. It's a sociology book about LA. Awesome, right? Wrong. I started reading this book and actually had a physical reaction to it. It made me sick. He's a Marxist and so he can't help describe anything outside the context of labor and capital and everything fits into this superstructure of institutions and so forth. The sentences themselves gave me a headache and made me sick. I'd reprint an awful sentence, but I can't bring myself to pick up the book and read anything from it.

On a somewhat related note, David Foster Wallace killed himself last night. Why? Completely awful.

Off to see a movie after a hectic weekend of wedding stuff. Lots of fun, though.