Not to be extravagant, but of my several skills there are several that stand out: I carry an encyclopedia of American Professional Basketball beginning in the year 1979 around with me in my head, I excel at acting absurd, and have excellent reading comprehension. Assuming this last fact to be true, and not some vanity induced delusion, it is fair to assume that the things I read affect me. My latest readings have been socioeconomic mash-ups that, in a nutshell, stand to decipher the determinants of success via divergently different ways. These books, far from the life affirming works of Murakami or even say Kesey's Jail Journal, cast a shadow of doubt on all life's endeavors.
If I have learned anything it is that:
1. The only control I have over my destiny is by working hard and laboriously with a sunny disposition.
2. It is best not to expect anything.
3. Keeping quiet is a good thing.
4. Illustrations prove a much better guide than pictures.
5. Unitards, though fun to wear, are ultimately unflattering and I should think twice before designating my "Spirit Garment" as something designed for super fit pre-teens.
Of the lessons I've learned, paramount among them is the exciting offers that lie in failure.
Last year, during Christmas Break, my friends Nick, Hoopster, John, and I decided to recapture our glory by making a movie. It was no small endeavor. We braved sub-zero temperatures to film brutal murders in the unforgiving Michigan Frost. We built a tawdry spaceship and came together as a team, but the project never came together. Because we never had anything to show, I classified it as a failure. My portrayal of "Fenkel" was a relic destined for the dust of human beings too absconded by their own shit to ever know true beauty. We had good ideas, a fun time making it, but we'd never laugh (over beers perhaps?) over the finished product.
Almost a year later...
I didn't give a shit about film making.
I thought of the past 3 years as a waste while I flirted with the idea of becoming a novelist, sailor, or needle-nosed prong in the Academic Monster.
Then, Nick, rife with indecision came to me fretting about the prospects of his latest film, a short top be produced for his 290 class. For those of you not in the USC film school, 290 is the life blood of our entire institution. It is our only chance to fully express ourselves as creative artists and produce full-fledged manifestations of ourselves.
A microcosm of myself: I came to USC riding waves of self-fulfilled projects. I took 290 in my first semester and felt ready to take the world over, only to find myself mired in the bureaucratic wreckage of holding a boom pole and getting permits for the next two years. If I hadn't fallen into a certain blessed group of friends I absolutely SHOULD HAVE DROPPED OUT TWO YEARS AGO.
But I digress. What I mean to say is that 290 is a big deal. I suppose I could have just typed that but flinging fancy words around never grows old. I get to pound my keyboard and letting me visit ESPN.com with my alarming frequency.
Talking with Nick it was clear he had no handle on his latest film. I proposed we remake our old friend "Podding". He thought of making it in Michigan with our old buds John and Pete. Than, the idea dawned on us... we should make this film in L.A. within the confines of our current structure. This meant I would be able to reprise my role as "Fenkel" but it also meant that the finished product would display the discrepancies between our Michigan lives and their Los Angeles incarnates.
We're almost done shooting. I have spent this entire weekend in the mindset of Fenkel, a hand smelling alien from the planet Shizzanafrottoma. In the process I thought I was losing my mind.
However, our past failures are no longer failures. They paved the way for this. The past year's events have prepared us both to honestly and accurately portray the story of an Alien coming to Earth and laying eggs all over the place.
There is no failure. There is only gestation.
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