Changing it up

Mercifully, my friend Will helped me build a new metal fence for my back yard so my pups can no longer escape when one of them (Soul Seeker) chews another big hole, the other two bounding after him.

I have no doubt they left the neighbors shaken from their notorious, menacing pack patrol posture for which my three 5-pound Pomeranians are renowned.

Not.

Actually, come to think of it, I helped Will, but what does building a fence credit count between friends?

So I'm back to sleeping soundly, knowing the little critters are locked and loaded inside the yard and can no longer put themselves in harm's way, even for a few minutes. Thanks, Will.

I have so much writing to do - between two feature scripts that are going to be produced, another animated feature and a couple other projects - I decided to change the scenery and ambiance to work. Instead of working at home - great as the fireplace is - I'm going to a local coffee shop with free wifi.

Which one is the question.

I've got a short list I'll be trying to see if it's a good idea. For me because I can work away for long periods of time and don't like to be bothered; for them so they don't think I'm taking up space that could be used by someone who eats and drinks more than I do.

Noise doesn't bother me because I spent so many of my formative years in newsrooms with police, fire, state patrol and sheriff radios blaring - at one time topped with the cacophony of wire service machines clacking and ringing when a bulletin crossed.

I live relatively near the University of Washington district, so there are probably lots of students who have the same idea, so a writer shouldn't cause any problems. It's also the reason there is this list of places in the region with free wifi and decent, reasonably priced food and drink.

I read that August Wilson used to write every day at a certain Seattle cafe. Maybe this will help my writing.

And my shape.

I figure I'll ride my new bicycle to these places so it won't take me an hour or more to walk to them. I'll load my scripts, research books, writing impliments, laptop, bike lock, rain cap, yadda yadda yadda in my new Sierra Club rucksack (could this scene possibly reek any more of Seattle?) and strike out for the first destination - a coffee shop that serves crêpes. Which, hopefully will be authentically French, parce-que je l'aime beaucoup.

If all this works out and I find just the right place, I'll put the picture up here.

Meanwhile I have my selections of songs down to about 40 for the potential singing competition. I'm driving some very patient people a little crazy - singing each of them to see if they think I should perform them. You know, if I sound good enough to perform them. So far we've eliminated one. Another couple of sessions with patient listeners next week should tell the story. I need to get the selection down to about a dozen.

I continue to work out weekday mornings at the nearby gym with my very kewl workout partner. I can't believe how much I'm enjoying it! And how much I continue to change up my nutrition program with good stuff.

There will be lots of news to report in the next few weeks; everything is proceeding positively one step at a time, moving forward as it/they should.

Hey, thanks for reading my blog - so far this month readers from 50 nations are tuning in. I have a couple show biz subjects I want to cover, which is always positive - and the hits go through the ceiling when I write about politics, so of course I'll be sure to cover those subjects.

I'm torn between Senators Clinton and Obama - wishing they'd join forces and run as P/VP. I don't even care who would be which. Together they'd put America back on the track of which we and the rest of the world can be proud in record time. Separately? It will take awhile.

Senator McCain, unbelievably, continues to tell the same tall stories Bush told us that got us into Iraq when we had no business invading the country. There are a million ways to fight terrorists; starting wars in nations that are not a threat to us in a region akin to a very dry powder keg sitting next to a lighted match is not one of them. And continuing to put more and more forces in does nothing to establish peace because the Iraqi government continues to do nearly nothing to create a political solution to their violent differences. Differences that existed before Saddam's iron fist crushed their enmity, and will continue after the US evacuates.

If Iraqis are only shown by invading forces that the way to "peace" is war, then they'll continue the war they have been fighting for centuries. A good role model showing them how to live in prosperous peace would have been a good thought. Too bad our President and his advisors had no idea how to create such a plan.

An increasingly insular world?

Oh. My. Goodness.

For a screenplay I'm writing, one of the characters listens to a PLD (personal listening device - in his case iPod), so I got myself a refurbished iPod on ebay, and my world. Is. Rocked.

As much as I love music and to listen to Stephanie Miller's podcasts (I'm at boot camp while she's on these days), I am totally ensconced in my private cocoon of music and merriment.

It has been a pain in the derriere getting all the iTunes software and programming set up, switching the music format from Windows music player (some songs do not reformat from WMP to iTunes, sadly) and trying to keep the iPod from downloading a bazillion episodes of the "Stephcast" with the wrong episode dates, and directing them to the wrong category ("album") so I'd recommend you drop by your local Apple store *first,* before tackling this on your own if you are even slightly computer challenged.

I'm going there this weekend to get the quirks out of my new PLD BFF.

Of course Apple folks want us sad little PC users to switch over to the hip, kewl, wow! and now! MAC anyway, so I think they make it just frustrating enough to consider it.

The sound quality is amazing. Fantastic. A friend is wiring his new house so that he can plug his iPod into his sound system and all the house speakers will play his favorite songfest programmed in it.

I have 237 songs programmed, an audio Sherlock Holmes book and some Stephcasts which fills about half of my little 2G memory. I'm as happy as a little canary who didn't pass the physical qualifying me to work in the coal mines.

But.

Here's the but.

I'm so thrilled listening to my music, it's difficult to interrupt my ecstasy. I'm reluctant to listen to people or the news or --

I play it while I'm driving - which I realize is not a good idea because I can't hear anything else in or outside the car - unlike the old Walkman, whose padded earphones allowed other noises to be heard. [Edited to note: um, good thinking, CP. I discovered listening to PLD's while driving is .. how do you say .. illegal.]

And of course it means I'm not listening to any radio stations. Surely *they* are not becoming obsolete?

Speaking of which, podding reminds me of when I worked in radio. I was news director and morning anchor at four different popular stations in the Seattle area. Music stations. Pop, rock, alternative songs. Which we'd crank up to decibels that made our sound proof rooms shudder. Our bodies were imbued with the music.

When we didn't do it to the room, we'd crank up the music in our professional mega-headphones, drilling our eardrums with MUSIC!

Because of my news work, I had to limit my exposure to these experiences, my hearing remains quite remarkable. My hearing becomes near dog-sensitive when I lie still - when I get a massage, the soothing music volume is too low for the masseuse to hear, but it's just right for me.

Unfortunately, I knew a lot of disc jockeys and musicians whose hearing was so severely harmed by doing this, they literally became either near-deaf or actually lost all their hearing.

Because of their hearing loss, they couldn't crank the music up loudly enough in their hot massive headphones to hear what they were playing, but we could hear the music pouring out of their sound-proof headgear across the room.

Maybe they just felt sound vibrations like Beethoven did when he went deaf.

My heart ached for them. Imaging loving music so much you want to work with it all the time. And these men and women knew music. And artists. And musical history. And instruments.

Then being cut off from that beloved sound except in memory, and ultimately from their jobs -- they kept screaming into the microphone because they couldn't hear themselves speak.

I find myself cranking my iPod as high as the "good old days," then remembering the folks who lost their hearing because they cranked, and try to keep blasting to a minimum.

Then I think of all the kids I see wearing iPods everywhere and wonder what their worlds are like. Are they cranking? Are they they happy in their insular pod worlds?

They're insulated by their music - not all sorts of music, but just the stuff they like. It's called "narrow-casting," contrasting with the idea of "broad-casting" all sorts of things to general audiences.

I'm fortunate because, as Phoebe Snow sang, "There ain't no music I can't use." I listen to *everything.* I enjoy every musical genre except songs with misogynist and homophobic lyrics.
That's good because as a film director I need to have an extremely expansive awareness and understanding of music, because each film has it's own musical character.

I'm currently working on a screenplay to be made that involves Chinese characters, so knowledge of a wide range of international music is crucial.

And I shuffle.

That means my music is scrambled up when it plays so I don't only listen to one artist forever unless I want to repeat the piece a bazillion times, which I'm also known to do.

As I say, when I'm podding, I am happy to have no human interaction except that of the singers or musicians or audio book or a radio show played at a time I can listen. That's my little pod world, and it pleases me.

I can see that limiting my pod time is in my future because I could have these little ear pieces stuck in my canals all the time, singing along, dancing like a crazy woman and be happy as a little clam escaping chowder duty.

Yes, I know the pods also download TV shows and youTube and all, but heaven help me if I got distracted with that. I am, however, going to buy episodes of 30 Rock on iTunes.