Watching: The two-hour Clinton administration retrospective on Frontline. I'm gonna miss that guy, especially considering what we're stuck with for the next four years. And yes, in case any of you were wondering, John Ashcroft is a right-wing fundamentalist sexist who speaks in tongues at church and was beaten by a dead guy in his last election. And look where that got him.
Admiring: Ted Koppel, for sticking with that same godawful hairstyle for the last twenty years.
Seeing: Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. Damn, but that movie kicks ass. It made me want to go home and do Tae-Bo just because I'm a girl.
Listening: New music, because I've been concerned about my obsessive tendencies as of late, and I thought I should start listening to something other than Dido. So I bought Carmina Burana, which is a cantata of choral music that you've probably heard before even though you never knew the name of it, and Moby's Play, which I still haven't quite figured out, but I do like it.
Buying: Eddie Izzard videos on eBay. I can't stop until I have them all. Plus I'm such an idiot that I bought one twice by accident. So if any of my British or Australian friends (or anyone else with a PAL system, or the ability to get it transferred) would like your very own copy of "Unrepeatable," it's yours for the asking. Just because I love you.
People who make me laugh: Vegetarians who smoke. Also, women who fuss with that useless toilet seat cover business but don't wash their hands.
Praising what is lost
Makes the remembrance dear.
--All's Well That Ends Well, V.iii.19.
(courtesy of my Shakespeare Quote of the Day calendar)
I really have very little to say. In fact, I'm not even sure why it is that I am updating, except that it's been almost a week since the last one, and I feel compelled.
I could talk about work, and the small coup I'm staging there, but I don't really want to get too specific about it, because that would be a professional disaster, to have someone from The Firm stumble across this little site and deduce who I am.
I will say that I finally got some face time with the partner in charge of our team, and he seemed to be impressed with my work. He had not been told that I was in fact a lawyer, so I think he was happy about that, and I also got the chance to tell him that I was very, very eager to go to trial.
I had worried about that, actually, in a stupid high-school kind of way. It's one of those things where the sense I get is that it's not cool to actually want to go to trial, but I can't help it. Not only would it kick ass to spend some time in New York on the client's nickel, but I think the vocational experience would be fantastic as well.
Okay, it's mostly getting to hang out in New York on the client's nickel. But still.
I could talk about the high school debates I judged on Saturday, and about how I was not really surprised that Kansas City Missouri public schools have lost their accreditation, because a couple of these kids, all of whom were at least freshmen, were barely literate. A couple of them were good, certainly, but I made them all sit through my comments even though it was clear that they didn't give a rat's ass about what I had to say. It made me want to go around and hug every high school teacher I ever knew.
I wasn't going to talk about this until after it happened, but since it's a slow news day, I'll break it now.
When I went to see Quills last week, I saw a flyer in the lobby of the theater for our local independent bookstore that hosts many visiting authors for discussion and booksignings.
And the visiting author next Friday is none other than my former employer, Stephen J. Cannell, one of the most prolific writers and producers in Hollywood.
Even if his name is not familiar to you, his shows are. The Rockford Files? The A-Team? Greatest American Hero? 21 Jump Street? Silk Stalkings, for crying out loud?
(Hey, I said "prolific." That's a quantitative term, not a qualitative one.)
The Cannell Studios was my second employer in Los Angeles, after a short stint on a Latino variety show. (You can imagine how well I blended in at that job.) I was a floater secretary, which meant that I would cover the desk of whichever assistant wasn't around that day. If no one needed me, I hung out in the mail room, delivering packages around town and breaking receptionists.
At one point, I sat outside Cannell's office for a couple of weeks, the assistant to his assistant, this woman who's been with him for twenty years. Cannell is dyslexic, which means that not only is his spelling atrocious, but he can't use a computer because it screws him up to have to look at a screen, so he would either write longhand or type, and his assistant would translate his spelling enough so that his second assistant could input the manuscript into a computer, which is what I did for two weeks.
Apparently he liked me, because when the company was closing and other peons were being disbursed, I got a call from his first assistant, asking me if I wanted to come to work for Cannell full-time as his second assistant.
I turned it down. I already had an offer from the man I ended up working for at the New Company, and it was a job with a little more challenge than typing words into a computer.
So anyway, I'm going to the booksigning on Friday to say hello. I know he won't remember me just by looking at me, or even by my name. Once I tell him who I worked for at the New Company, he'll probably be able to place me, but I'd still be surprised if he actually remembers that I turned him down for a job.
The only bad part is that I'll probably have to buy the book. The Cannell Stuidos was still in existence when his first novel came out, so we all got a signed copy, but I never read it because the first line was stupid. I can't remember it now, something about this kid dry-humping this girl and how he would have "got in" except her father came home.
Uh, no thank you. But I'll chat him up and buy a book, and it will be fun.