New Shows

So ever since I started at VFS, I have had to watch TONS of movies and tv shows I either don't know or barely remember watching. And you know what? I love each and every one of them. I'm going to talk about 2 newly discovered shows that are like crack.

1. Supernatural - yes I know I'm late on the boat for this one. I honsetly didnt pay attention to it when it came out back home, but it was a show I picked up on simply because i was required to pick a "genre" show that was still in production. Well, Firefly, Angel, and Star Trek were all gone, so someone recommended this. SUPERNATURAL is a 44 min long drama that follows the adventures of 2 brothers trained to fight all things evil, including spirits, monsters, and other such nasty night terrors. Starring The Dude from Gilmore Girls and The Dude from Smallville, I didn't have much hope for it. Silly me. It is a great show, at times scary, suspenseful, and always sarcastic. A sort of "X-Files meets Nick Hornby". I love it.

2. Dead Like Me - A little show that unfortunately got cancelled. Starring Inigo Montoya from The Princess Bride and some girl who acts like Daria, the show is about a teenage girl who dies and finds out that she is to join an elite after-life organization called "The Grim Reapers"... a bunch of nobodies assigned by God to reap the souls of the recently departed. It was an awesome show crackling with wit and tinged with a touch of existentialism. It will be missed.

3. (Bonus show!) The Office, American Style - Yes, I know that Americanizations of British shows suck more ass than a tapeworm. Well, ladies and gentlemen, meet the exception that proves the rule. In fact, Iw ill go out on a limb and say it is better. WHy? Because even though Steve Carrel is more retared than Ricky Gervaise, the stories of the American version always temper each bitter episode with just a tinge of hope, leading to a much mor uplifting feeling in the end.

Multiply

By the way, I have a multiply site now:

http://thomasvfs.multiply.com

I have some pix up of my and Kathy and from VFS

The Missing Weekend

Back at home I always had weekends. No matter what school I was studying in, no matter how stressed I got, I always had weekends that recharged and re-energized me. The weeks were hellish, but at least the weekends were restful.

Ever since May 20 2006, those weekends have disappeared.

It's an odd feeling. Whenever I go back to school on mondays, I don't feel rested at all. I don't feel recharged. I don't feel... well... I don't feel bad about it really.

I look at it as being in one constant state of working with only brief moments of respite spread throughout. Now I understand the old advertising maxim: Work hard, play hard. I am a string strecthed taut by script studies and pitch creation. Every so often I'll have a film viewing or night at the pub to pluck that string, but it never unravels.

I work even on weekends. I have a rule that I don't work on Saturdays, but that ain't quite true. Even if I don't actively work on a project, I still read my scripts and think about my pitches. On sundays back home, I used to play soccer with my buds and dinner after. Now, it's Sunday afternoon battles wrestling with Final Draft 7 in the VFS writing lab.

And yet...

I love it.

I am always tired but it is a good tired. It is a tiredness born from productivity and meaning, not from mindless repetitive acts that mean nothing.

I look forward to those moments (usually on Saturdays) when I can relax either by myself or with my friends... but oddly enough I also look forward to each and every day of my studies at VFS with equal intensity.

I finally feel that I am doing something worthwhile with my talents.

p.s. I dunno if any of the above made sense... I just spent about an hour working on something and my mind is mush.

Poem

Just a poem I wrote for Kathy in class:

Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
No. That is too corny and too cliché.
Shall I instead look for something else to compare,
And see if that catches fire?

The antelope’s gait, drumming across valleys,
Reminds me of you in a way,
But how can I compare thee to an animal as she?
Flighty and frightened you are not.

And what of the eagle soaring majestically
On currents of wind and air and frost?
No… none of this for you my sweet,
You are neither so distant nor so cold.

But the shark, ah the shark.
Vicious, snapping, horrendously crashing
You are like this, yes? Stubborn and unstoppable.
Shall the shark be thine avatar?

No.

I think instead that this is not to be.
Metaphors and Similes were never your lot.
For how could I compare thee to anything at all?
You are beyond all things mundane and small.

You are you.

And that is all.

That is all.

Beach Party

Last night was my first beach party here in Vancouver. Interesting... quite a different animal from those in Manila. Of course, I've only been to 2 beach parties back home, but still.

For one thing, although a number of the guys (and girls) got shit-faced drunk, nobody got stupid. Well, one guy did... but I won't say any more about that. I think it has something to do with how mature most of us are here in the writing program. I've always said that it takes a special kind of crazy to choose to become a writer, and I stand my ground on that. But even more than that, it takes a certain level of MATURITY to choose this profession. We all know that as screenwriters we will never be treated with as much respect as we deserve, but we still do it... for the love of it.

And that maturity came out last night. Whereas most of the people I knew back home got really stupid when they were drunk and quite prone to obnoxiousness to offset their immaturity, this group of writers sat around a dying bonfire and told stories. Not crazy "look at me I'm cool and bad-ass" stories... they were stories about life, about love, about marriage, about loss, about pets, about longing, and about Kevin Spacey. There was one dunderhead there, but he belongs in the less secure of his identity set. But besides that, the night ended with roughly 90% of the group drunk (not me! I don't drink! And I was driving! See? Responsible!), and those drunks were some of the nicest, most intelligent lushes I have ever met. All in all, quite an enjoyable night.

Plus, it was good to release some stress, eh?

VFS

Hello everybody,

Well, i'm gonna officially scrap my essay about comics simply because I don't have the time to explore it as much as I would like to. Suffice it to say, Comics has gotten a bum rap. Read Scott McCloud's books for everything I would have wanted to say, and then read SANDMAN and STARMAN for examples of just how great, artistic, and literary comics could be.

So I'm in VFS now, started last month. Having an awesome time, and I will definitely write about it soon. Just a sample of my homework: I have to write a screenplay adaptation of the first chapter of The Maltese Falcon, I have to come up with pitches for three short films, I have to come up with pitches for 2 different tv shows that are still currently in production (Probably THE OFFICE and Grey's Anatomy), I have to read THE WRITER'S JOURNEY by Chris Vogler, I have to write a 20 line poem that doesn't rhyme, I have to read the screenplay of SOME LIKE IT HOT by Sunday...

And so on.

My teachers are awesome. My classmates are awesome. My school is awesome.

And I've just caught myself starting to say "Eh" all the time.