Life in Brief

Actually working a LOT this last week, on what I hope and pray is the final pass on the "Spec w/ Emmy Award-Winning Producer attached" (but probably won't be, seeing as the latest round of notes has added almost ten pages of new material to a script that's already widely perceived as being overlong.)

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MEANWHILE...

When I've come up for air, I've found myself...well, to be honest I've been sad. I'm not renowned for my upbeat demeanour, but my usual default position is anger, which at least has the possibility of some entertainment value. I haven't given it much thought, but it seems to me right now that righteous fury is the best place to be on the negative side of the emotional spectrum. It's energizing, it gives me some clarity of focus--something good can come of it.

But this week, I'm not angry, I'm just depressed. I happened to stumble across two situations, one I'm not involved with at all but which nevertheless upset me, and one slightly closer to home, which upsets me even more. I've done what I can re: the former, don't know what I can do with the latter, other than dwell on it and feel awful for the various people involved (and myself, which is selfish, but there it is), which is what I've been doing. Forgetting to take my pills this morning didn't help.

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THE HIGHLIGHT OF MY WEEK

It hasn't been a totally awful day. At the Harbor, we generally listen to 102.1 "The Edge", a Toronto radio station for background noise, esp. the 2:00-7:00 (Toronto time) weekday slot, which is hosted by long-time friend of Happy Harbor, Fearless Fred. Fred's a huge comic fan, to the point that he's working to create some of his own. He's also one of the more surreally amusing radio announcers I've ever listened to (not that that's a huge pool to draw from, seeing as I only listen to the radio at and on my way to the store.)

Yesterday, I half-heard Fred talking about the weather in TO, specifically a snippet to the effect of "It's such a great day I'm trying to combine beautiful and glorious into one word."

Naturally, I spent a ridiculously long time mulling this idea, and eventually came to the conclusion that the best option for such a combination was "Globeautrifulous" (pronunciation: glo-BYOO-tri-flus.) Having gone to the effort of concocting this abomination, I of course felt compelled to e-mail it to Fred, who promised to use it during his weekly examination of upcoming films. For a couple hours, I waited with baited breath. It was a fairly slow day in the shop, not a lot of people around, nobody at all for the twenty minutes prior to the movie previews.

And then, of course, a couple people walked in the door just as Fred started the segment. One of them came and stood silently in front of the till as Fred preemptively spoiled "The Bountyhunter" ("Jennifer Aniston and Gerard Butler? They get together in the end. I just saved you ten bucks and two hours of your life.") and Diary of A Wimpy Kid ("It's funny because it's ALMOST TRUE!"), before wading into Repo Men, which, given the time he'd spent on the segment already, I knew had to be when he'd say globeautrifulous. And indeed it was, or so I'm told, because it was exactly four words from the end of the segment when the customer in front of the till decided to start talking.

Fred mailed me, saying "Please tell me you heard that." I replied with pretty much what I typed above, with substantially more swearing.

The next time there was a break between songs and commercials, Fred came on and managed to work globeautrifulous into a sentence. And he did it in such a way that I couldn't possibly miss it, regardless of who might be talking at the time. He didn't yell it, but it wasn't that far from it.

That was without a doubt the highlight of my week. Which probably says something about the week I've had.

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STILL READING?

There are better things out there you could be reading. If you're an aspiring comics creator, I can even tell you what one of them is: IDW editor Mariah Huehner (ANGEL, THE LAST UNICORN) has spent part of her day on Twitter, tweeting about creating comics in general and the role of the editor in particular. Semi-related: Dark Horse editor Rachel Edidin (THE MARQUIS: INFERNO) has some tweets along the same lines, usually under the #makingcomics hashtag. Both are worth following, if following people on Twitter is your thing, but especially if you're thinking about getting into the creative end of the comics biz.

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