The Trouble with Androids

Should mechanical slaves have rights?

File this under more research for me, for my play about androids. Yes, long in development.

Everything at the right time, though...

DARKROOM

Check out this intro for a short-lived horror anthology series from 1981. Things were scary as hell back then -- what the fuck happened?

I remember, as a child, seeing this intro made me want to crawl out of my skin.

I love the fast camera, skittering along the ground. The ominous narration, written in the too rarely-used second-person-point-of-view...

Good friggin stuff. Also, I'm obsessed with the interiors of houses at the moment -- for understandable reasons...

Our Dirty Little Hearts

Okay, you sad little step-child of a blog. You've been around for over a year. Justify your existence.

Blogs are tricky because you play a game with yourself -- imagining that nobody's reading it and imagining that somebody's reading it. The nature of the internet, though, is that even if nobody's reading it today... they may read it months from now. And that's why you have to think about what you're doing before you feed the internet caches. Idle thoughts, proper nouns, can become virtual ghosts. They leave an imprint. They can come back to haunt you.

But you err too much on safety and it's easy to wind up with a blog that possesses a very slight personality.

I'll save the burning of bridges for another day, though...

Another round of the Summer Play Festival's coming up. I'm sure the finalists have already been notified. I'm looking forward to seeing the press release. With appropriate caution and dread. It's great to see friends succeed -- but enemies get their days, too.

Regardless, I may steer clear of SPF4. I was there plenty for SPF3. New year, new blood, as it should be. I won't be the guy drinking from a paper bag in the high school parking lot, telling people, "I used to go to school here..."

It's been a strange trip for me, since last summer. On paper, I'm doing pretty well, I think. But the green-eyed monster is always lurking. I don't have updates as often as I'd like. It's hard to really talk about work that's speculative.

This blog is probably just a series of oblique teases, I'm afraid. It'll have to do for now. Not ready to lay it all out.

I'm working. I'm writing. That's what important, in the end.

And the work's going to see the light of day.

Domo the Robotto

A new breed of robot. With eyes.

Devil Town

I was living in a devil town
I didn't know it was a devil town
Oh lord it really brings me down about the devil town

All my friends were vampires
I didn't know they were vampires
It turns out I was a vampire myself in the devil town

The Absence of Love

I write plays about the absence of love.

You wouldn't believe the amount of research it requires...

I hate the meet cute.

I'm interested in the stories about two people who don't meet. Disconnection. Failures of communication. You know how many people never make a connection in their lives? Who expire alone?

All is not equal. Some people (mostly girls) may let an endless string of long-term monogamous relationships carry them through a lifetime. For girls, one relationship fizzles, there may be 10 guys queued up for a shot. They might not be princes, but there's 10 of them.

Meeting people might be pretty easy, but not meeting people is a bloody cake-walk. It's remarkable how far you can go without meeting anyone at all. I could spend a day walking all over the face of Manhattan -- not exchange a word with a person, not make the briefest eye contact.

That's one of the curious things about this city. It can be the friendliest place on earth. It can be the unfriendliest. Exciting and dull. Optimistic and bleak. It can change on a dime. Fortunes can swing.

Or you can die alone in your apartment. And not be found for a month.