Tuesday, June 30, 2009

Why I love airport bars

I reflected on this again earlier tonight after a random and fun conversation waiting in the Virgin America terminal for a flight back to the east coast.

Here's why airport bars are great. Most people are traveling alone, have nowhere else to go, and are bored. Nobody's driving (except the pilots) so there's no reason to stay sober. Everyone has something in common: bitching about various aspects of the travel experience. For all these reasons, you always end up sitting next to random strangers from all walks of life, and having really interesting conversations.

Tonight is a good example. Right now I'm on a plane (with WiFi! Holy Shit we live in the future!), but earlier tonight I was in the Virgin America/Alaska Airlines terminal at LAX. There's only one bar, and when I'm about to get on a redeye, I like to have a beer or two. It was very crowded, so in the search for a place to sit down, I started talking to a woman who was in the same situation. When two bar seats opened up right next to each other, she pointed them out and we sat down next to each other with our bags and started chatting.

She was blonde, with big fake boobs. I was pretty sure she was a stripper or did porn or something, but didn't comment on it. I treated her like any other fellow traveler and kept conversation pretty casual, and didn't even ask any follow up questions whenever she mentioned the "modeling" that she did. We talked about traveling, beer, LA, and her two kids (aged 8 and 9, even though she was about my age).

It was a fun game for me to put together what she did by the context of how she discussed work. For example, she mentioned that she had just been cast as a stripper in a Gerard Butler movie. She mentioned going to a party at the Playboy Mansion, and that she was hoping to get in the magazine.

Her name was Melissa. She discussed how she was having trouble getting her accounts kicked off facebook when she uploaded photos, even though she assured me that "none of them had nudity, or if they did, nipples and stuff were covered up."

Basically, this was someone completely different from me, but very nice. We were very friendly, and yet I wasn't hitting on her (made possible by the Writress shagging me out with regularity I'm sure). It was informative, fun, and a classic LA conversation. It was great.

This is just one of the many random conversations I've had in airport bars. I've seen the range from your regular "i need someone to drink with" guys to a woman who confided in me that she was gay, and it was a big source of tension between her and her mother.

Everyone has a story to tell. It's easy to remember that when you're in an airport.

Friday, June 26, 2009

Continued Job Hunt

I had a pretty good interview earlier this week, but if this current economy has taught me anything, it's that a great interview isn't always enough anymore.

There was time in my life where every job I interviewed for, I got. I suppose it's just harder to seem impressive these days when I'm in my chosen industry alongside hundreds of other people in my shoes applying for the same jobs.

Even when I was applying to Harvard, I'm pretty sure I got in on the strength of an interview I had (I made the admissions lady laugh. I guess I was pretty charming back when I was 18). Now I'm crossing my fingers and following up in what ways I can. I'm hesitant to even write about it here, since talking about something I look forward to has always been the best way to jinx it in my experience.

The bright side of my continued unemployment is that I will be able to go visit my family for a week over the 4th of July this year. Originally I wanted to go back later in the summer when my brother would be there as well, but if I do happen to get a job in the next week or two I don't want to take time off when I'm still new to whatever office it might be. Plus, 4th of July is great on Cape Cod.

Writress started her first job this week, which means we aren't hanging out 24/7 anymore, but since we were like that for pretty much the first 3 weeks of going out, I think it's okay. Things are still going well, and apparently I even got the "we like him" from her parents after meeting her dad. It all feels much more relationshippy than anything has since college, but I think that's because I'm finally ready for that.

Sunday, June 21, 2009

Starting a new pilot

So I've finished the first draft of the last pilot I was working on by myself, and I'm nearly done with the one I'm working on with my roommate. Obviously there will be a revision period for both scripts, but in the meantime I've also started on a new project.

Right now all I have is the rough concept, and a sketch of what the pilot episode could be. Which each organizational step I take I come up with new details for the world and connections between the characters. I see it ideally as accomplishing what Heroes was aiming for, bringing that sense of wonder but not needing to follow the Heroes example of having 15 main characters who didn't know each other.

I've set a schedule in my calendar similar to what I used through my writer's group, but on a slightly faster pace. If I'm still unemployed that long (hopefully not) I'll have a draft in about a month and a half.

Friday, June 19, 2009

Roommate tension

Again, I haven't posted much of late. Aside from things still going well with Writress, the only other thing going on is that the temporary roommate has been even more of a pain in the ass of late.

He's been passive-aggressively trying to bait me for weeks now. He acts like I'm intruding on his space anytime I'm not just sitting out of sight in my own bedroom, even when I'm just sitting in the living room in the middle of the day watching something/playing something on the Xbox that I paid for. It acts as the communal DVD player, and a sort of OnDemand machine since I bought a wireless adapter for it, and paid for XboxLive (which I almost never use for online gaming) because that gives us access to our instant Netflix Queue on the TV. He uses the xbox all the time, and honestly has an attitude like I'm encroaching on his space if I momentarily prevent him from being able to sit on the futon that I paid for and watch stuff on it. Basically, he was fine with me living there when I was working and out of the apartment most of the time. When I lost my job and have been home during the day more, he no longer has his way with everything. At least he's only around for another few weeks.

My other roommate, the guy I moved out here with, doesn't want to get stuck in the middle. But frankly, he's not that in the middle. He seems to be mostly on the other guy's side even though he acknowledges that I'm not the awful roommate/person the other guy is trying to make me out to be. Roommate use to be my best friend. I don't know what happened, but over the course of the past year I seem to have been demoted in status, which pisses me off. He's a nice guy, but there just isn't nearly as much loyalty in him as I once thought. He's been boxing me out more and more over the past year, to the point that I feel more like a guy renting a room in his apartment than I feel like his friend. If I didn't live with him, say if I started renting a studio apt by myself (which might actually be cheaper for me anyway) I doubt I'd ever see the guy anymore.

Once the invader is gone in a couple weeks I'm going to sit down with Roommate and have an honest discussion about this. Frankly it's been upseting me more than it should. And if he really hasn't noticed anything wrong with how things have been going the past year I'd be surprised.

At least I have Writress to kick around with now. It's been about a month since we met and she's still great. I even told my family about her, which isn't something I've done about girls I've dated since CollegeEx (definitely didn't tell the folks about MissCrazy). I see this going for a long time, and it's good. I remember when I first moved out here thinking that the kind of girl I'd end up with would be another tv writer. I don't think other people understand it. She's kind of the girl I've been waiting to meet since I realized I wanted to do this with my llife.

Wednesday, June 10, 2009

Met the new girl's Dad last night

So I have a new girlfriend, and she's the reason I haven't been posting on here very much in the past couple weeks. She's also trying to be a TV writer out here, but unlike me she just recently moved here. While we both job hunt, we have tons of free time so we hang out like two broke people together and watch a lot of DVD's. It's a good time.

We've also taken some time to sit down and write together (on separate projects) which means we aren't even slacking off all that much. I've decided her blog nickname should be the Writress.

So Writress's dad was in town on business last night. The two of them went out for dinner together, but I met up with them for dessert, which was good. Afterward she claimed that he liked me, so I guess I did alright. I hadn't met the father of a girl I was dating since my college ex, and I met her parents when we were only 18. So it's been a while (i.e. seven years) since I've been in the hot seat like that. Good to know I came off okay.

I haven't told my parents about her yet, but I think I will soon. This isn't something I did with MissCrazy over the six months we dated, and I also never mentioned the last significant relationship to my parents (this was a summer thing that became more serious, especially for her, a couple years ago. Sidebar: that girl just moved back to LA and has been texting and facebook wall posting me. Perhaps drama will ensue, I'll keep you posted).

I just feel very comfortable and at ease with this girl, and I think I'm in a place where I could allow myself to get serious with someone again. When I broke up with the college ex senior year I did not expect to go this long without taking anything seriously, but in retrospect I should have. I just didn't want to be in the position to break someone's heart the way I broke her's for a while.

Do I see a future with the Writress? Hard to tell since we've only been dating for a couple weeks. However, it has been a very good couple weeks, and we have a lot in common and both seem to want the same thing out of life. For now things are relaxed and at ease, but I can still tell that she really likes me without needing weird drama from her end to confirm it.

So far, so good.

Tuesday, June 2, 2009

Things are still pretty good

So that great first date lead to great hanging out every day this past week. It's been a good time. No drama, and we have a ton in common. She's new to LA and looking for her first industry job, so since I'm unemployed at the moment we're able to just hang out and be cheap together. Mostly watching lots of TV show DVD's, though we have also taken some time to write (on separate projects, no collaborations yet) which has been good and productive.

There's been no official discussion of girlfriend status as of yet, but things are pretty much looking like that.

More postings to follow.