the slack daily

Things You Should Know About.

• Emily needs a home.  I know it's one post down, but she deserves a link of her own!

• There are a few hours left to vote on My Nerd Crush! So check out the semi-finalists and vote for your favorite!

• BetheBoy is collecting Fourth of July Stories.  What're you doing this weekend?

• Speaking of BetheBoy, have you joined his Facebook Network yet?

• Annika turns 30 this weekend!

• Yes, BetheMarriage LIVE! (On Ice!) is coming to you Saturday, July 5h at 9PST. Don't miss it.

• I find myself in need of ITC Coolman and Highlander Book fonts.  However, I can only find them available for purchase.  Can anyone help a sister out?  It's  for non-profit use.
Nevermind!

Parallel Bloggers.

There's something weird about being married to another blogger, much less blogging about it.  It's a decidedly post-modern problem that will probably soon have a support group and an acronym.  In the meantime, I've noticed that when I hit my blogging stride, Will sometimes wavers and when he hits his (see today's post, fr'instance), I sit at the screen with nothing to say. 

So in the meantime:

• Yes, there will be another Live Chat Saturday night!  Mark your calendars!

• We got Guitar Hero and although my actual guitar experience and my freakishly small hands has probably held me back in some regard, at least I'm the #1 Rocker in the house.  In my defense, I asked him if he wanted to play and he said no. Pinky Swear!  Judy Nails and our band Cupcake (please tell me that's not the best name ever for an all-girl band?) are blazing through Medium.  I am sure that I shall receive my comeuppance forthwith.

• Semi-Finalists for My Nerd Crush have been announced! Vote!

• How uninspired have I been lately?  So much so that I watched Breakin 2': Electric Boogaloo in its entirety last night. To answer your question: yes, it holds up to the test of time.

• And in case you ever find yourself in a breakdance fight, I offer you this clip.  (From the original, classic Breakin'. To be used for training purposes only.)

Life/Death.

Things that make me die a little inside:

• Hearing from someone that they took a check that was mistakenly sent to their house and wrote on the envelope "no longer lives here."  To be fair, they did email me about it - just to an email address that I haven't used in two years (and I haven't used to correspond with them in just as long.) 
• having a woman refer to me as "girl."  Not as in "she's such a cute girl" (I'll live with that) or "Girl, get it together!"  (sassy!) but as in "Girl, there's no toilet paper in the bathroom."

Oddly enough, those are also the same things that make me feel stabby.

Things that make life worth living:

• WE HAVE A WII.  (And a Wii Fit!)  Don't tell Will that Wii Sports sneaks in some exercise with his game-playing.  He's a purist that way.
• We had a GREAT chat last night.  My thank-you speech, here.
• We've decided to make BeTheMarriage Live! (On Ice!) a regular fixture, so check out the details here. For those too lazy to click: this Saturday, June 28th at 9pm PST.  BYOB.

I hate blogging in lists, but I hate not blogging even more.

Also!  SlackMom celebrates her second 31st birthday today!  Happy Birthday SlackMom!

My favorite SlackMom story here.

No Free Lunch.

One of the benefits of being an unemployed writer is that people always offer you writing work.  It's rare that a week goes by that I don't field some sort of offer to ghostwrite a book, pen a screenplay, assemble a television pitch or rewrite dialogue.  They've always found me through LinkedIn or MediaMatch or Variety's the Biz.

This week's contestants:

1. Person #1: 

Respectful, returns emails, inquires about my rate, is eager to discuss the project.  

2. Person #2: 

Offers me work on an "exciting project" that happens to be their screenplay. Does not inquire about my rate, tells me "it's all there except the story."  When I discuss payment am simultaneously told that a "writer" should work for "art's sake."  Explain that landlady is not willing to be paid in half-finished screenplays and discuss my hourly and project rate.  Receive an email in return insisting that they can hire the guy who works at the gas station for $5 an hour.   Respond saying that I hope to see him and Union 76 on the Oscar stage next year.

I'll let you guess which offer I receive more frequently.

I've done some writing work for causes I believe in, but that's a case where I've intentionally donated my time in a volunteer effort.  But why do people expect writers (and artists, and web designers, and filmmakers, and bloggers, and etc. etc. etc.) to work as a hired gun for no money?

Do you work for free?

...

Me to Will, last night:

You know what I think one of the secrets is to a healthy relationship?  You hate the same people.

...

Elsewhere around the web:

• I am anti-education. (See the comment on the left, and my response.)
• Will has Things To Do on a Friday Night.
• I can only offer you things to do on a Saturday night: BetheMarriage LIVE! (On Ice!) will be headed your way Saturday night, 9PST.  Check it out at Stickam.
• Tomorrow night The Doctor is In with yours truly.
• When Good Things Happen to Good People:  My friend Tomas' movie The American Mall is almost upon us - and is already in Sears!
• When Good Things, Part Two: TC gets into Moorpark College's Exotic Animal Training Program!
• Piglet reviews our first LiveCast.
• I've got stuff going on over at Antisocial Networking.  No really, go see!

NerdGirls are Easy?

My thoughts on the Newsweek article, "Revenge of the Nerdette" over at Antisocial Networking!

Slackmistress! Live!

I'll be putting the broad in broadcasting over at Yahoo! Live tonight at 9pm PST.  Come on over and check it out!

From my profile page:

The slackmistress, live and uncut. (And I would prefer to stay uncut, so stabby stalkers need not apply.) Got a dating dilemma? A social snafu? Some sort specific conundrum? Just wanna chat? Pop on by and Ask Dr. Slack!

My channel can be found here.

An Ode to My Car.

I love my car. I don't LOVE my car - I don't suffer from mechaphilia and you can't find me humping the hood a la Tawny Kitaen in a Whitesnake video (or at least you can't prove it.) But I love my car.

I also secretly think this makes me an asshole.

It's been no secret that times have been tough.  Even before the Detective Agency, gigs were getting harder to find and magic green envelopes (containing Lizzie McGuire and Romeo! residuals) were arriving in my mailbox less frequently. Thankfully I was able to secure a few animated projects to get the bills paid, but the downside of that is that a lot of animation isn't covered by the Writers' Guild (although they want to - companies just aren't willing to pay Guild residuals and pension and health benefits.  See the most recent result here.)  About 18 months ago, everything came to a screeching halt and I started picking up any sort of non-writing gigs I could in order to pay the bills.

Alas, I discovered that I wasn't the only person dealing with the fickle hand of economic fate, as temp agencies were packed to the gills and those part-time jobs that Los Angeles seems to manufacture also had a waiting list.  An ex-boyfriend once called me lazy.  (He also told me I was fat, but that's another post altogether.)  I don't think he truly understood that my lack of results meant that I lacked effort.  I've managed to scrape together an odd amalgamation of jobs while keeping my finger in the TV-writing pie and trying to launch a new blog (so, so lax on this one) or two (much, much better at this.)

Falling a few notches down the food chain has been an interesting experience, and not as terrible as you'd think.  That's not to say that I hate money.  Or success.  Or that I'm not busting my hump every day trying to further my - and our - lot in life (as every friend and family member who gets the weekly one-line email I love you and I'm thinking of your but I am busy as hell and not ignoring you je promis!)  But it's also taught me that there's plenty of stuff I can live without. 

Except for my car.

In my darkest times, I've considered selling it.  It's a conversation piece.  Total strangers take pictures of it.  The gym isn't far and maybe biking to work at 5:00am isn't as scary as I think it'll be.  It's just a thing, a possession.  It doesn't define me or who I am.

Except that it does, a little bit.  One could consider it part of the Slackmistress Brand.  The car is an anti-depressant, like the prozac of the automobile industry.  Strangers wave to me on the street.  Little kids stand open-mouthed as I drive by.  It would make Angelyne jealous.  Not to mention that it'll be paid off in a few months, gets good gas mileage, and isn't an arm and a leg to insure.

So I love my car.  I'm pretty sure that makes me an asshole.  I'll live.

Related topics: The 5! Workin' Blue.

Ways in Which I am a Wuss.

A while back,  Wil Wheaton wrote about the group of baby mantises (mantisis? mantisisess?) that hatched on his patio.   I may have to revoke my girl card, but I've always been fascinated by bugs.  In fact when I rented a small house in North Hollywood,, a family of crickets used to live in the light fixture above my bathtub.  Every day I'd disrobe and slide the glass door open only to discover a passel of crickets trying to scale the sloping porcelain sides of the tub.  They'd get about halfway up, slide back down, and then hop over to another side to try it yet again.  I started keeping a plastic glass and a notecard to trap them with, stranding them under the cup and then gently sliding the notecard underneath, I'd make sure they were secure and then pad to the back door, where I'd release them into the backyard.  

I was always naked, of course, because I'd never remember to do a cricket check until I was starkers.   I wondered if the neighbors called me the crazy naked cricket lady.  I didn't save all of the crickets - some of the babies were near impossible to trap (although I tried!)  - but after a few months, I could reach in and pick up the crickets with my bare hands and release them into the wild.

While the crickets fell from the light in the ceiling, they never fell on me while I showered.  My friends were disgusted but I sort of liked living in the the house that rained crickets.  Occasionally they'd get into the house and I'd pad around silently, trying to intuit where the sound was so I could cricket-nap them and take them outside.  The day that one fell into the heating grate in the floor was the worst, as I lived without heat for a full month afterward, not wanting to be responsible for cricket cremation.

Will and I were half-comatose on the couch last night watching TV when an ad for WALL-E came on.

We're not seeing that, I told him.

Why not?

Um, because I practically wept at the robot Superbowl Ad?

Good point.

Posted to counteract my previous jerkiness.

Today on Antisocial Networking: Be Your Own Constant (and the Most Ridiculous Picture of Me, Ever.)

Don't forget to Tell Me About Your Nerd Crush (and win prizes!)

More on the slackmistress + bugs: The Insect Messiah.
(note: if you're weirded out by spiders, don't click on this.)

Ways in Which I am a Jerk.

I was three years old when I attended the Ark preschool in Glen Ellyn Illinois.  It's the place where I learned to tie a knot and write my first and last name and sit quietly and read my book while the other kids went over their ABCs.  Outside on the small dirt playground I eyed the monkey bars in shape of a snake wearing a boater suspiciously, not entirely sure if he was going to swallow me whole or burst into The Music Man.  There was music time and quiet time and learning time and play time.  Honestly, the only thing that interested me was learning time. Quiet time was a waste, I could nap at home. Music time had us playing triangles and wooden blocks, which I would have enjoyed if the other kids didn't use the time to throw them at each other.  But play time was was the hardest, as everyone separated into groups and I'd have to figure out who I'd be friends with for the day.  I wasn't really willing to commit past that.

I've written before that I was an odd child, and I wasn't really interested in playing with the other kids.  This worried my preschool teacher, and notes were sent home saying I didn't play well with others.  I wasn't mean, I wasn't disruptive...I just didn't really seem to care. SlackMom finally took me aside and said pretend you're interested in playing with the other kids. That'll get her off your back.  Now that she had explained it in terms that made sense, I complied. And I learned how to get along with people I didn't particularly like.

Working the front desk at an upscale gym in Los Angeles, you'd think I'd run into cases of over-inflated egos with a sense of self-entitlement every day.  The fact is that it's rarer than you'd think.  But there are a few cases where my smile shines a little brighter, my compliments get a little more effusive, my hands clasp and I positively giggle. 

It was a moment like this that my boss, T., comes out of her office and asked what the hell was that?

That was me being a jerk, I responded.

If I don't like someone, I make no effort to connect to them.  Usually by way of ignoring them.  But there are some people you cannot ignore.  They're your co-workers or they're your clients or they're friends of friends and you have no choice but to interact with them.  So I'm nice  Beyond nice.  Incredibly nice.  I overcompensate for the fact that I don't like them. 

This used to be due to the fact that I thought there was something wrong with me, and perhaps by being nice I'd see whatever it was in them that everyone else would see. And y'know what?  That rarely works. Now it's just my way of being a jerk.  Because generally if you don't like someone, they know and don't like you back.  So if you're only nice to them, complaining about you makes them look like a bigger dick.  Because I'm a jerk that way.

How else am I a jerk? 

I think this is brilliant.  (Is that jerky?)
I have been slack on the slack daily.  I assure you I'm not sitting around eating bon-bons.  If you're having a slackmistress jones, you can always stalk me at Antisocial Networking, Twitter, and the Slackmistress Appreciation Society (I think having an Appreciation Society also makes me a jerk.)
I would consider item number two to take care of the jerks in item number three.

Ways that I am not a jerk:

I listen to my husband's songs about the air conditioner.

Your turn!

Me! Me! Me!

• I could cut and paste it here, but that would require work.  Check out why I won't see Sex & the City over at Antisocial Networking.

• Check out the Slackmistress Appreciation Society!

• I got my Nerd on and met many fabulous people at TweetUp LA.  It's the first internet event I've attended in years where I knew not a soul. (Well, except for the one that's allowed to touch my butt.)  Pictures forthcoming.

• Little-know Slackmistress fact: I hate fast food breakfast.  But Tomas may change my mind when he encounters the Southern-Style Chicken Breakfast.