Travels are done, hopefully for the year.  Nice trip to SF and bookstores.  Loved my time with Towne Center Books in Pleasanton (thank you Judy), Lafayette Book Store in Lafayette (thank you Linda and Dave), Book Passage in Corte Madera (thank you Elaine), and Copperfields in Santa Rosa (thank you Amanda).  The surprise trip to Fort Lauderdale was so sad.  A bittersweet moment with uncles, aunts, cousins, and then back so quickly.  To Ojai for Thanksgiving and now to work again.  Fit in the work as the rest of the holiday season comes screaming at us full blast. 

Listening to Glenn Gould play Bach’s The English Suites as I write.  Unbelievably brilliant.  No wait.  It’s Glenn Gould.  Believably brilliant.  And delightful no matter the expectations. 

Now back to it. 

My thoughts are with Jim Hargrove today, as they have been for the last week.  He was 31 years old.  He was the son of my cousin, making him my second cousin or first cousin once removed, I can never do that math.  I have fond memories of our time together.  He will be missed. 

I journey to Miami for the funeral, which is to be held on Friday. 

It is strange and tragic when young people die, particularly when it is so terribly senseless. 

I feel for his father, and very much for his mother.  She has become a very close friend over the years.  I wonder how you go on. 

I had a yoga class today taught by a young man of 31 that I have known a few years.  He is just getting started, just finding his way.  As was Jimmy.  I looked at the yoga teacher and I was amazed. 

There are no words. 

It’s nice to be out of the Hollywood meat grinder.  I don’t miss writing screenplays, even though I have written 50 or more of them.  I don’t miss seeing my work churned into unwatchable drivel on the big screen.  I don’t miss trying to pretend you’re excited when you go into some knucklehead’s office who wants to give you notes.  And I certainly don’t miss the follow up letter with the “we’ve decided” and “we’ve all agreed” that you’re going to do something, when only the knucklehead in the room decided and tried to hit you over the head with it.  I don’t miss the conversations you have with yourself as you try to make the stupid notes work to satisfy a creative executive (isn’t that an oxymoron?) who needs to prove that he or she belongs in the job.  But most of the time, when Hollywood has a problem with your work and you’re getting to that desperation point, but you think, you THINK you’ve finally given them exactly what they really really really want and they’re finally going to make the goddamned thing, that’s usually the moment when they throw another writer at it.  Usually in a conversation that goes something like this: 

“Oh, Dave, now that we’ve given you all these incredibly stupid notes on your script and you’ve done your professional best to incorporate them, we notice that the script now blows, which, of course, we blame entirely on you (because it couldn’t be our fault, our ideas were brilliant, it was your execution), so we’re going to do the most irresponsible thing possible, we’re NOT going to go back to the original script that we loved, we’re going to bring on a new writer to get as far away from that script as humanly possible, so we can suck all the remaining life out of it.” 

To those of you who think a life working in the movies is glamorous, you’re welcome.   

I was having an email correspondence with the excellent author Laurel Corona (The Four Seasons), and she chose to put some of my musings on her blog.  If you are curious, you might visit her website: http://www.laurelcorona.com/

You will find it under the heading “Pretend It’s Broken”.   

Sent a short overview of the new book to my editor in the UK.  She likes it, hey Mikey!  Guess I’ll keep going. 

My yoga places keep swirling toward the drain.  I follow the Forrest people, but they keep getting booted out of their space, or individual teachers decide they don’t want to teach yoga any more.  I need my fix.  I’m too old to ‘hop’ or Ashtanga.  Just give me that old timer yoga. 

I have never been a Yankees fan, a little too much overdog for me, but after watching Johnny Damon last night, I’m beginning to feel a shift coming on.  His at-bat in the ninth was pretty darn fine, two outs, he was in the hole 1 and 2, worked it to a full count, then slapped a pretty single to left… but it was that steal of second base, in which he saw where the third baseman (covering second) was as the ball bounced in from the catcher (he was on the first base side of second), Damon made an instantaneous decision to go and all he had to do was outrun the third baseman because third base was wide open.  The fielders were in the Mark Texiera shift, everyone on the right side of the diamond.  Damon goes into third standing up, now he’s in Brad Lidge’s head, still two outs but you know what’s coming.  It was just something special.  I was talking to the TV, in pleasure, shock and delight.  My wife came in to see to whom I was talking, thinking one of the boys had woken up.  Fox did their post-game interview with A Rod, as if driving in the run was the most important thing.  But then they did a longer one with Damon, getting it right. 

Man, that was something.   

My editor in England has expressed interest in the new novel.  I will be ‘pitching’ her the concept in the next few days.  I already pitched it to my agent, and she has approved.  I hope to have a first draft in a few short months.  Nice that it was only a years’ worth of research this time.