All at Once the Ghosts Come Back

Here it is, Friday night, and I find myself almost overwhelmed by nostalgia. And of course, it's the music that's doing it to me, but I'm the one who picked the music.

I played Queen's "Under Pressure" tonight for Trevor, who, freshman year of college, used to come back from his last class on Friday afternoon and play it at tremendous volume, so loud that posters would fall from the walls, while he danced like a spastic top around our dorm room with an infectiousness that was impossible to resist.

I played the Chris Isaak Mosh Song, otherwise known as "Go Walking Down There," for Craig, who used to come home to find me bouncing around like my own spastic top to it in the living room of our rented house in Sydney, and who would join in without hesitation, because my man Dino, he's got rhythm.

I played "So Lonely" by the Police for Frank from sophomore year, who introduced me to the glory of their early stuff, and who insisted that I looked exactly like Stuart Copeland.

I played "In a Big Country" by Big Country, 'cause sometimes you need a little Big Country.

I played "California" by Low, off their new, great album, THE GREAT DESTROYER. Low's been staying true to their name and laying low, but they'll explode this year, and they'll only have this album to blame. Buy it. It's fantastic.

I played Interpol's "Next Exit" 'cause I ain't going to the town, I'm going to the city.

U2's "One" needs no explanation, nor does the live version of "With or Without You" from RATTLE & HUM. "Stay / Faraway, So Close," live from Dublin, is so great a track it makes me want to weep. I will see them play Madison Square Garden this year, come hell or high water. And then I'll have a Guinness or ten down on the Lower East Side with mates I haven't seen in far too long, and life will be complete.

I'd forgotten how good Iggy Pop's "The Passenger" was.

"I gather speed from you fucking with me." Great lyric. Pearl Jam's "Rearview Mirror."

I could only find the album version of Hunters & Collectors' "Throw Your Arms Around Me," which pales in comparison to the live acoustic version that somebody played for me at a party at Coogee Beach in Sydney, and which managed to find its way onto every mix tape I made the following year. Smokie's "Who the Fuck is Alice," condemned to an inexplicably unlabeled mix tape done in April of 1996 that is now buried in a shoebox of similarly unlabeled mix tapes from the same period, tragically remains lost.

My favorite version of Counting Crows' "Round Here" is an eleven-minute-long opus from a concert at a club in Paris. Yes, I know the idea of eleven minutes of Counting Crows makes makes all you hip indie self-aware music fans cringe, but I don't give a damn. I love Counting Crows, and "Round Here" makes it into my top five without a sweat.

Dave Matthews' "41" I played for myself, and I sat back and thought about the times I would listen to CRASH (borrowed from a terrifically understanding roommate, the aforementioned Dino) on the bus across the Sydney Harbor Bridge to AFTRS, the famed Australian School of Film, Television, and Radio, where I would sit in the library and soak up the atmosphere and read everything about screenwriting I could get my hands on. And I thought about running across that same bridge with a friend, singing at the top of our lungs, deliriously happy, on our way to pub, after pub, after pub, before finally ending up back in Kingsford at dawn. I thought about conversations had on benches by the water in Circular Quay over fried rice and on tables by the water over beers. About secrets shared and hearts opened and understandings reached, but not really reached. There were times in Sydney, amongst the impromptu Irish dances with scary women at nameless pubs, and the Jim Jarmusch screenings at UNSW, and the walks through the parks and the midnight swims on the beach and the VBs and the great talks with great, great friends, where I would stop for a moment, and sit back, and think, This is as happy as I've ever been, and I'll never be this happy again.

I was wrong, of course. But I play "41" 'cause it's a great time to think about.

Viral Advertising

Been a bit busy here, but I had to pop my head up to share this hilarious and hilariously inappropriate Volkswagen ad that somehow popped up on the Internets. Volkswagen, of course, denies all responsibility.

Oh, GRAND THEFT AUTO: LEGO CITY is another one that's way too good to just tuck over in the sidebar without special mention.

Options

So, in the movie biz, see, somebody wants to reserve the right to buy this thing you wrote, so they give you some money, and they call that an option. 'Cause they want to have the option of buying your thing, without someone else buying it while they're thinking about it. Hence the name. And while the both of you are trying to decide how much they'll pay you for this option thing, you're also trying to work out how much they're gonna pay you once they actually decide they want to buy it, and hopefully, make it. And now you're trying to determine what you should get paid for this thing that you came up with in your head about a year ago and got down on paper in between your day job fixing computers and sleep. You're trying to give it monetary value, this thing you did.

So you're mulling over your options, both literally and figuratively. And you're negotiating a price for this thing you pulled out of your head, and you're wondering what's too much, what's too little, am I gonna get screwed, am I gonna miss my big chance, etc., etc., all the while reminding yourself, far in the back of your head, that, geez, people seriously want to make a MOVIE out of something you wrote. That's the cheerleader running around in the rear of your skull, trying to scream over the noise of your forebrain trying to work out financial possibilities and percentages and budgets, since you're basically negotiating all this stuff yourself. Your forebrain is scanning over sample contracts downloaded from the WGA's website, while that little cheerleader is yelling how friggin' COOL it would be to walk on the set of a film that you wrote.

And then you remember that you're starting a job on Monday at that place that does the kind of stuff you used to dream of doing when you were, like, twelve years old.

New Year

The last few weeks have been a bit of a blur, to say the least. December turned out to be quite a month: once I turned thirty, a lot happened in my life, very quickly. The short version is that 2005 is bringing with it new employment, and possibly much more; I'll hold off on the long version until I see how things pan out.

2004 was a year of change--for myself, and for many of my friends and family. New children, new jobs, new cities, new families, lots and lots of life-changing events. And while it's a year that ended with terrible tragedy, I still find myself filled with hope and anticipation for the year to come.

Happy New Year, everybody.