Have you ever heard of lucid dreaming?

Hi, I'm back with the promised update.

A couple weekends ago I participated in New Zealand's "48 hour Film Competition." I was on team Africa From Russia which consisted of various friends and acquaintances; most are in the film production program at the Uni. We received the following information at 8:00 pm on Friday evening and had to write, shoot, edit, and hand in the 2-7 minute long film by Sunday at 5:00 pm.

Genre: Horror
Character: Alex Puddle, who is an exaggerator
Line of Dialogue: "It doesn't fit."
Prop: A Rock

My role was writer/initial idea guy. We had a group meeting for a couple of hours where we discussed what scares us and what type of horror movie we were interested in making. We all agreed on an atmospheric, ambiguous horror. Then my teammate Zanna and I worked until around 4:30 in the morning on a script involving bad dreams, lucid dreaming, Scotch on the rocks, Peanuts references, and murder. Over the next couple of days the rest of the team shot the script. I was able to see it at one of the competition screenings last Wednesday. It looked pretty polished, had a great soundtrack (supplied by my bro, Dead Luke/Varlot Tarsod), and confused the audience to no end. But that was to be expected. I'm pretty much a snob.

Here's an exceprt:

YAEL (V/O)

Your turn. I’ve told you my deepest, darkest dream—now I want to know yours.

STEVE (V/O)

Mine?

YAEL (V/O)

(Playfully)

Yeah, what kind of monsters did you have to conquer?

STEVE (V/O)

It’s a short one. I’m on a hotel balcony, I don’t know where. I’m smoking a cigarette and I’ve got blood all over my face. But for some reason I know it’s not my blood. A man walks by below me and I feel like I know him, but I’m not sure if I should wave. Usually I do.

I've run into my first real snags in the novel recently. There is a ton of revision and rewriting ahead of me, which I'm not super excited about, but the themes of the story are developing nicely. The characters are all slippery and weird, which is exactly what I want.

Other things I've been rocking recently:
Matt Chandler - Emily turned me on to him. Some pretty amazing preaching, honest and authentic and damn funny.
All The Real Girls - David Gordon Green nailed the slippery nature of volatile relationships in the midst of growing up
The Aleph - Jorge Luis Borges is suffocating me with his circular library of texts and time
Licorice Tea - The sweet after-taste spin-kicks my tongue into full-on party mode (think Spud MacKenzie in my mouth!)
Open House - A story about stealing drugs during home-tours I just cranked out on Saturday. Another excerpt:

It was supposed to be the crowning achievement in our “parade of homes” extravaganza that was more circus than parade. We were the carnies slithering through the crowds marking the idiots for exploitation while copping quick feels on their nubile teenage daughters. At least that’s what I imagined.

We could only travel in groups of two, even though there were more of us. Two was a manageable number, a couple. I was with Terry, who I think cooked P in an old railroad car he had gutted and hauled up a hill somewhere. But maybe not. He sure acted like he cooked P, and he had this wheezing laugh that reminded me of squeezing the wooden bellows when I was a child.

News of Awesomeness:
I just found out that my application to be a TA next semester was approved. I will be leading two classes of 20 students each in discussions of all things creative writing. It is a 252 course, so the work load will be intense, but I can't wait!

Hang tough, friends!