2010 in review

If you’re a wordpress blogger then you probably got one of these cheery little “hey, you did some great blogging in 2010 – check out the pie graph if you don’t believe me” e-mails.

Really? My 2010 blogging record is considered good? You do realize that my last entry was in May, right? OK, If that’s the case, then let’s just get 2011 off to a rousing start, by…(continued next year.)

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The stats helper monkeys at WordPress.com mulled over how this blog did in 2010, and here’s a high level summary of its overall blog health:

The Blog-Health-o-Meter™ reads Fresher than ever.

Crunchy numbers

The average container ship can carry about 4,500 containers. This blog was viewed about 18,000 times in 2010. If each view were a shipping container, your blog would have filled about 4 fully loaded ships.

In 2010, there were 13 new posts, growing the total archive of this blog to 161 posts. There were 37 pictures uploaded, taking up a total of 2mb. That’s about 3 pictures per month.

The busiest day of the year was September 17th with 90 views. The most popular post that day was Best Friend Application.

Oh, THAT’S How It Works

Hey, here’s what I’ve discovered – in order to write a show you have to write, and write some more, and rewrite, then keep writing. And maybe keeping a public journal of that process isn’t as interesting as I initially thought it would be.

So, I’ve been writing, and writing, and rewriting, and I plan to write some more. My “final script reading” is in 2 weeks. Then I’ll memorize the show.

Let me just tell you what memorizing the show will entail, as I don’t have to wait ’til it happens to know this.

Here’s how – brute repetition.

There. Mystery solved.

Thanks for coming behind the scenes with me. See you on the road. Soon.

Oh, and here’s a failed attempt at a publicity photo for my show.

First Reading of “Every Job…”

The script reading was a success. What is “success” in this context? Well, there were lots of people, so that was cool. And since this was a first-time-out-loud performance, I got a good sense of what does and doesn’t, will and won’t work. Funny how some things seem pretty funny (or interesting) when you’re alone in your little world, but when you put them on the stage, well…standby crickets, and….GO crickets.

But that was the point. It was the one circumstance where the crickets were specifically asked to weigh in.

I made a video with my back in 1986 called “Contemporary Rock Music.” It was a mock-u-mentary, and I thought that a little snippet of it would be perfect in the show about Every Job I’ve Ever Had, specifically pointing out why I was never actually paid to make mock-u-mentaries. I was wrong. Very, very wrong. But how else are you gonna find out, right?

I feel like I have a good solid framework for the tweaking that needs to happen next, and again, that was the point.

Then I hit the road – off to Yerington, NV to do “Baby Book” (aka “Me, My Stuff and I”)

That’s me in front of the Shoe Tree on Hwy 50. It’s a tree in the middle of absolutely nowhere – with shoes in it.

I stayed at the Copper Inn in Yerington. They have phones!

I think the person in charge of ordering their pens may not have taken quite enough time to proofread the final product before signing off on the job…

Or maybe there actually is copper in the motel, and the pens are just a reminder of this.

After my show in Yerington I jumped in the van and drove through the night so I could get to Fresno in time to do a reprise of “Jesus in Montana” at the Rogue Festival. I’m staying right next to the cop shop, which is not an important detail, but a forced segue into this picture…

24 Hours Away…

As of this moment, I’m right at 24 hours until my very first public outing of “Every Job I’ve Ever Had.” I’m feeling pretty good about it, but I’ll probably work on it for at least another 15 of those 24 hours. Gotta sleep a little bit, right? It’s just a script reading, but still – it’s definitely a landmark.

I’ve really been wanting to get to that place where I wake up at 5:30 a.m. ready to get to work writing, and I finally got there – today. I’ve put in some 14-hour stretches over the past few days, and it’s a good feeling. Whatever it takes to cut Facebook out of my life, really.

Here’s a screen shot…

I Had A Dream…

I had a dream two nights ago that someone scratched my car as they pulled into a parking place. I said, “You scratched my car,” then went on about my business.

Look, I’m sorry – I’ll never ever share another dream here again, I promise. This will not become Barry Smith Dreams About Stuff and Writes It. But this one was pretty good – first of all, I generally don’t care if my car gets scratched. In the dream it was a small scratch, so it was easy not to care. But I’ve interpreted the dream like this: I want to call Apple tech support about what happened to my Keynote file – see previous post – but I woke up from the dream knowing that just moving on was the way to go.

See, my keynote file just took a major shit and I lost pert near everything in it. Hundreds of images – gone in a heartbeat. Imagine you’re typing in a word doc and as you’re about, oh, a month into a big long story it suddenly says, “Oops – something happened – please restart.” And when you do all that’s left of your 80 page document are the words “this,” “cereal,” “pencil” and “Rudy.” And there’s NO WAY to get it back. Ok, so you backed up a few days ago, so you’re really only missing about 4 days of writing, but still – whooosh – your shit can disappear just like that. We know this, right? Sure we do, sure we do.

As of now, about 48 hours after the incident, I’m caught back up, back to where I was pre-whoooosh. And I feel a sense of focus that I may not have had before. Something about coming face to face with your e-mortality is very motivational.

My point – In 5 years of using Keynote nothing like this has ever happened, and to witness it firsthand was terrifying. I don’t know what tech support can do at this point besides tell me that they don’t know why this happened and that it’s not something that happens often. That’s hardly worth half an hour of hold music. So I’ve decided to just move forward. I am now Mr. Paranoid Backer Upper. I thought I was pretty good before, but I realize that I wasn’t.

I have just one day shy of 2 weeks before I do my first public reading of the show – and I’m flying to Iowa on Wednesday to do a performance of Jesus in Montana – so, it’s promising to be a very busy two weeks. Hooray.

I’ve started a Master List. I have TO DO and TO FIND on it – things to do (like I needed to clarity) and things to find, specifically pictures and documents that I know I have somewhere but don’t seem to have scanned into my computer yet. And yes, I always leave my pen on the page just like that – that’s totally not a set up photo. Completely natural.

I have about 30,000 items in my combined iPhoto libraries. You’d think that would just about cover it, right? No – still need to find the Garfield cartoon that I tried to draw when I was 13. Crucial element.

Time to back up and get some sleep. Here’s your screen shot for the day.

&$%$#!!

It’s about 1 a.m. on Friday night and I’m home working on this new show. Have been for hours. Through some bizarre computer error, my project just took a major shit and I ended up with this:

See all those question marks? That’s where pictures were, just moments ago. And not just on this slide. On every slide. All 90 or so that I’ve created, including the 200 that I already had on there. I’m at a loss as to how to express myself without the type of profanity that would make me regret it when I revisit this page.

Fuck.

I’m not a clumsy computer user. I know my way around pretty well. This was not operator error. This was just some serious fucked up fucked uppedness that has just set me back about 5 days – 5 days ago being the day I did my last backup. I’m such a backup evangelist, too. 5 days isn’t as bad as it could be, and I would have backed up when I was done tonight. I’ve already had to postpone one deadline because I was a few days behind on this project. Now my mac has seriously let me down.

Fuck this multimedia shit. I’m getting out the sock puppets.

Grrrrrrrrrrr…

Every Job I’ve Ever…Well, You Know…

Continuing on the writing-about-writing-a-new-show theme…

Now I have papers with words on them spread out on the floor. Look, I never said this would be exciting, it’s just the way it goes…

And here’s another screen capture from the “multimedia” portion of my show. I really want to do a lot of graphs and lists and drawings and cartoons and scribbles in this show. Graphs are funny, right? Right? I’m liking my spiral notebook keynote background. Made it myself. I also made one that’s a yellow legal pad and an old “Big Chief” tablet. You’re not REALLY working until you’re making your own Keynote themes, baby. It’s OK if I call you “baby,” right?

Eventually all the stuff that I’m now doing on the computer will be done by hand, by me, then scanned and put into the computer. I’m making extra work for myself, but I think it’ll be worth it.

For now, though, I’m just trying to get a good rough draft together. Later on I’ll, as Frank Zappa used to say, “put the eyebrows on it.” Although I have spend way too much time geeking out on what the first 60 seconds of the show will look/sound/feel like. So far I have a Rage Against The Machine song playing at the top of the show. I hope I keep that in.

Here, for no real reason, is my dad (right), circa 1975. This picture was sent to me recently, meaning that up until a month or so ago I didn’t even know this treasure existed. Hooray life!

Zipper Song

Back in about 1985 my brother bought the “Breakin'” soundtrack. The last song on the cassette – yes, cassette – was called “Reckless,” and featured the early vocals of a pre-cop-killing Ice-T and some, well, reckless turntable work by DJ Glove.

There’s some serious scratching on this song – in fact, the song is pretty much all about scratching. Having never heard scratching before, we thought it sounded like somebody doing their pants zipper up and down. And I have to say, even 25 years later, in this particular song it really does sound like that.

We liked the song, and played it a lot, so we got to know it pretty well. One day we decided to make our own music video. So we went to the garage, did a bit of rehearsing, hit RECORD on the tripod-mounted camera and PLAY on the cassette player, lip-synched for 3 minutes and – presto – The Zipper Song!

It was a big hit in the family. “The Zipper Song!” “Play the Zipper Song again!” “We’re gonna send the Zipper song to America’s Funniest Home Videos and win $10,000!” “Let’s watch the Zipper Song again!”

Well, nobody ever got around to submitting the Zipper Song to AFHV, otherwise I’d have footage of me being interviewed by Bob Sagat, which would be awesome. Actually, I don’t know if it would have made the cut. Here’s a still…

Here’s the thing – I think I have a place for the Zipper Song in the new show! And that’s very exciting to me. But not so much to my brother, who does some amazing zip-synching work, and for some reason is embarrassed by it now. I think I have a lot more to be embarrassed about than he does, and I think it’s great. Perhaps even a little bit…reckless.

Library Cards – Show-making Continues

Remember library cards? The ones you’d get from the card catalog? It’s not a relevant question, really, I was just trying to do a “library” and “card” tie-in.

I’ve been writing for about 8 hours straight, so this is the best I can do.

I went to the library. I tore up some pieces of paper (like cards – get it!?) and wrote a “scene” on each one. I put “scene” in quotes because they aren’t really scenes, more like concepts. Little nuggets of kernels that need to be put in some sort of order. I write things like “shit poking” and “colorado” and “situation wanted” on them and start moving them around. It’s fun. I love the computer, and have no real anti-tech feelings, but there’s just nothing like writing stuff on paper and moving it around on the floor or table.

I spent last week doing what I called a “loose pencils” writing of my show. In the comic world “loose pencils” is the rough, very rough, lightly sketched first draft. In pencil. Next comes tight pencils, then ink. I’m not actually in the comic world, but I’m a fan.

As of today, this minute, I have 26 days before I have to stand on stage and read my script-in-progress. Feeling good about it. Here’s a screen shot of my work today.

This is me (below) in early 1989 in a squat in London.

I was writing, then thought, hmmm, some day I may want a picture of me, in a squat writing, so I put the camera (Pentax ME Super) in the corner of the room, sat the timer, then ran back and started “writing.” I found this picture today, and was looking at it on my computer screen, so I figured I should do exactly the same thing, 21 years later – a picture of me pretending to write while looking at a picture of me pretending to write.

Coffee should probably be prohibitively priced. Or heavily taxed.

Important Discovery

I wore the same shirt for my freshman and sophomore high school ID photos…I just noticed this the other day.