Lapses of Posting, Finals, and an official response to John August's Blog Post regarding music education

As I'm sure you've noticed, It's been a few weeks since I've updated. My life has been somewhat chaotic and full of promising terror. At the end of this month I'll be moving to LA. I'm transferring with my current company to a similar position down there and moving in with some friends in the Los Feliz area. Very exciting.

 And it just means that in addition to finishing out my last semester at San Jose State, I also have the responsibilities of making sure my work transfer goes through, mailing checks to my future room mates, canceling my internet, finding the best deals on moving trucks, packing, and giving my landlord a thirty-day notice. Did I remember to cancel the PG&E?

 Anyway, I wanted to apologize (because I know you wait with bated breath for every one of my updates) and reassure you. No, you are not forgotten. Yes, I will be continuing to update this blog. Yes, I am mostly saying that for my own benefit.

 The other thing I wanted to address here is a blog post that John August made on Saturday regarding the music education of the country's children. John (I feel like that's kinda informal, but we're in my living room now) made an update more or less claiming that rather than teach kids the instruments of a traditional symphonic band, we should just have them learn piano and guitar.

I totally follow his logic. I played music all through high school and even went to a summer band-camp that I continue to be a counselor at every summer. I'm 24 and that is in no way weird. I realized one thing about the kids that tended to sit first trumpet or first clarinet. For the most part, they played piano as well. It's clear that there is a correlation between children that play piano in addition to their symphonic instrument and their success as music students. Piano is an incredibly visual instrument that makes for an intuitive association between the written music and the way it is played. I really wish I had started playing on piano, but I wanted to be like Lisa Simpson so I just went straight to the saxomaphone.

However, as he points out, the sound of twenty-four pianos being played together in a concert isn't something to behold. It is in this vein that I maintain that the traditional symphonic band must be maintained in schools. That the instruments that have always been taught ought to continue to be taught. Because playing in a symphonic band brings in entire new dynamics to the performance of music. There is a dialogue that takes place between conductor and musician as well as amongst the musicians themselves. They listen to each other and respond. They communicate cues and indicate, in a very dynamic way, the direction of the ensemble. It is a very different experience from playing piano or guitar alone.

It doesn't matter if you're five or fifty with thirty years of piano playing, the first time you play the violin it's gonna squeak and sound terrible. At least when you're five you're just happy that you're playing an instrument. So here's what I'd suggest. If your child shows an interest in playing music get them a piano or a guitar and some lessons. But also let them enroll in their schools music program and play trombone, clarinet, or violin.  They'll gain all the benefit of an education in piano or guitar, as well as the invaluable experience of playing in an ensemble.

Alright, back to studying. Three final exams and a 6 page paper left until freedom.

Format Solutions and Fairy Tales

After some serious thought, and a good night's rest, I think I've figured out how to post segments of screenplay onto the blog while retaining the format.

I use Celtx at the moment to do my screenwriting, which is a wonderful and free alternative to Final Draft and is available for download here: CeltX. Anyway, it doesn't come with all the bells and whistles that Final Draft undoubtedly promises, but it does let you export your script as an HTML file. I'm hoping that I can update the blog in the view html and copy+paste the source from the saved HTML script file onto the blog.

I think it worked. After the jump is an original short I wrote two months ago called "Goldilox" It's a modern twist on the old fairy tale. Hope you enjoy.


Well, for some reason, I can't seem to get it to retain the formatting defined by the HTML and it kinda ruins it. Dialogue lines run long and Character Headers aren't capitalized, but are slammed against the left margin and look terrible. It's a problem.

Update: I've figured out the whole issue. Turns out, I wasn't putting enough room between the Jump Break HTML and the HTML of the script segment. So now, without further adieu, I present Goldilox:

Those moments

For the last month or so, I've been working on a series of shorts called "Stiltskin." I don't wanna give too much away, but it's a retelling of Rumpelstiltskin with a sort of modern twist/edge to it. I'm writing episode five right now, and I'm always amazed how sometimes things just come together in the most perfect way to create something even better than you set out to write.

I'd like to re-post it here, but I'm having trouble figuring out how to get it to maintain formatting. I'll have to try again tomorrow, because for tonight I'm spent.

Happy Thanksgiving.


Update: Since I've figured out the way to post Screenplay content, properly formatted, I'm going to share the segment I wrote last night for the "Stiltskin" series. Again, from Episode five. Some context: Diandra is the Miller's Daughter charged by the King with spinning straw into gold.

Opera, Gears of War, and Google

This morning I woke up with a song in my head. I couldn't remember what it was, but I knew how one part of it went, and I knew it sounded operatic. So I searched youtube for Pavarotti. Within a few minutes, I was listening to the exact song that I'd been needing. I feel like this is the true power of the internet. It frees us from having to ask our friends, "what's the name of that song that goes..." If you know only a few words of a song, Google will happily provide you with the rest of the words, where to buy the song, and, depending on your filter settings, a photo of a naked woman.

The song I'd been looking for was Con Te Partiro. I'd heard Bocelli sing a parody of it to Elmo on Sesame Street in an attempt to turn children into public broadcasting opera snobs at an early age. There's something resonant about the song though, and not just due to gorgeous acoustics. It feels like one of those songs that Gears of War would use in their premiere trailer. It has the same hint of sadness to it that past Gears of War trailers have had. 

When I listen to it, I think of someone saying a final good-bye before going off to an unavoidable fate. Real third-act tragedy shit. It also makes me wish I could sing. Or at least have voice that would afford me the chance to rock a serious late 70's cut like Bocelli.

Of all the blogs on all the servers in the internet...

You're reading mine.

Thanks.

The purpose of this blog is to discuss screenwriting under the guise of shameless self-promotion of my own works. Strike that, reverse it.

A bit about me: I'm a student at San Jose State University studying English and looking to graduate this December. After graduation, I'm going to move to LA to pursue a career in screenwriting. Exciting, no?

Having grown up in a small town, I experienced quite a shock moving to a major metropolis like San Jose. My childhood was spent in a town that had been labeled by the government, for purposes of educational funding, as "Agricultural" (read: cow town).  This was more or less a fair assessment of the twenty-five square miles that composed the city limits, of which only about ten percent is occupied by the two Federally Funded Research and Development Centers in our little cow town. One is a sister-lab to the one that developed the atomic bomb. The other is named after the Nobel Laureate that co-founded it. The three big exports of our agricultural town were cows, grapes, and fission.

As a result, the town had the drawing power of Silicon Valley and Salinas combined into an atomic juevos rancheros of potential.

While my youth had accustomed me to taquerias being as common as Starbuck's, I wasn't ready for the shock that came with moving to San Jose. With a population of over a million, tenth largest city in these United States, there's actually only about 300 people. If that many. And for the most part, they've all dated each other. The most tragic aspect of living in this bustling locale is that, unlike the cultural hubs other large cities such as San Francisco or New York have become, San Jose has opted to sprawl out indefinitely rather than consolidate and produce something vibrant or worthwhile.

There's a joke I've heard different people tell again and again. What's the difference between yogurt and San Jose?

Yogurt has active cultures.