The quest for perfect teeth is a bumpy one.  For the third straight week, Brittany’s check up has resulted in unexpected oral surgery.  Despite her toughness, tears followed. Maybe slightly crooked teeth aren’t so bad.

Happy Birthday to my Aunt Ona today.  Here is a picture of Devin posing with her graduation gifts to him.  Cash and condoms.  Gotta love her.  Devin’s grandfather, a very religious man, is staying with us for a few weeks and thought the colorful pleasure pack was a box of gum.

Brit’s team won the Santa Monica Beach Tourney this weekend. Brittany bruised her right foot, so she used her left foot to score a bunch of goals. Always a great way to spend the weekend.

Saw Pixar’s Up today.  Very good.  The four minute montage in the beginning is one of the best I’ve seen.

Beach Soccer

We moved another step closer to #11.  Devin is a grad.  Despite a painfully awkward and boring ceremony, we were proud parents and grateful to have so much family in attendance.  I’ll post a video tomorrow, but thank you to everyone who helped make this night special for us.

I finally got around to seeing the latest James Bond flick, Quantum of Solace.  I know some Bond fans were upset, but I like the direction they’re taking the franchise.

#24 in progress. We took a few clients out to the new downtown restaurant, Rivera.  A latin fused tapas joint with great food and even better drinks.

The inspiration for this blog was a photo diary project I started on June 12th of last year. I vowed to take at least one photo a day for 365 days and post them to my flickr account for a few friends and family to follow.  I’ll write more about it once it’s completed in five days, but until then feel free to take a look.

Saw The Hangover.  Funny.

A beautiful day at the ballpark.

We attended our final High School baseball banquet dinner with Devin.  He was given the Golden Glove award as the team’s best defensive player.  #8 made us proud.

#90 Done.  George’s graduation brought the family together giving me an opportunity to play with all of my nieces and nephews. Best game of the evening was beaning each other with ping pong balls.

My “little” brother graduated.

#22 in progress. Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller is a half fiction, half autobiographical account of the author’s life as a struggling writer in Paris.  It was first published in 1934 in Paris, but didn’t hit America until 1961.  Its publication in the states led to an obscenity trial that tested many American laws on pornography. Although it depicts frank and graphic sex, it is by no means erotic.  In fact, the sex is rather depressing.  The “sex scenes” are more about the human condition as all of the woman are either prostitutes or damaged human beings looking for something better than what they have.  And the men are just as F’ed up.  Although this novel is basically plotless, it was a page turner for me because of what the author had to say about himself and his fellow man, none of it dated despite being written in the thirties.  The novel is essentially one long essay on the underbelly of life.

One of the reasons I made reading these classic novels a goal of mine was to hopefully learn how to become a better writer.  Tropic of Cancer is considered a masterpiece because of Henry’s raw honesty.  He showed you everything, the good, the bad, and the ugly. Reading this I realized that I tend to censor myself too much, too afraid to be naked and judged.  Looking back on my life, I’m not all that surprised.  I was a shy kid who went to nine different schools before even attending high school.  I learned to adapt by sitting in the back of the room and flying under the radar.  As long as I didn’t expose myself I wouldn’t be judged. I started to write in high school, but my English teacher was more concerned with spelling and grammar than content.  I read a lot as teen, but mostly nonfiction books about baseball.  Instead of growing up on Fitzgerald, Hemingway and Henry, I read George F. Will, Roger Angell, and the editors of The Sporting News.  The writing was top notch, but it was also straightforward and safe. My first screenwriting teacher was a nun at Marquette.  No way was I going to expose myself to a nun.  My screenwriting teacher at AFI, a man who made his mark writing Pocahontas II and a few episodes of Touched by an Angel, focused on his 100 rules of screenwriting.  #4: Never more than three lines of action at a time. #23: First Act can be no longer than twenty pages. #71: Your characters can never respond “whatever”. I actually practice that last rule, but my point is is that I was groomed to be more of a journalist than story teller.  My influences and mentors never encouraged me to explore emotional truth, but that is what true story telling is all about.  It’s not the graphic depiction of sex in The Tropic of Cancer that is jarring, it’s the emotional truth behind it.  Where Henry used sex to expose and magnify the heart of his characters, Jack London often used nature, and Hemingway once used a big fish.  The bottom line is that the act doesn’t compare to the reason.  Of course, nearly every writer knows this, but spend enough time in the Disney system of screenwriting as I have and you will begin to homogenize your writing in hopes of appealing to everyone to increase your odds of a sale.  When everything boils down to a ten second pitch or twenty word log line, character is the first thing to go. The suits want to hear about the plot and the action set pieces that they can sell in a trailer or put on the poster, so you chuck the most important elements of story telling out the window and focus on the car chase. Now, that’s obviously a recipe for disaster because from the hundred of action scripts that the studio has to choose from, they’re going to pick the one with the most emotional truth whether they know it or not.  None of this is particularly revelatory, but this novel did remind me that I’ve been focusing too much on the “what” and not enough on the “who and why” which is what makes a story truly great.

#8 in progress. Our first month as an employer was a good one.  Although expenses climbed considerably, we feel the addition of our employee will allow us to focus more on growth.  Revenues are up 373% from May of 2008 and maybe a fraction of a percent from last month.  We picked up our first international client, a six store operation from Mexico which forced us to take a crash course in exporting.  The lessons should help us tap into the Canadian market and perhaps beyond.

#25 continues to play hard to get. In fact, I’m going the wrong way.  But some how, despite accompanying me to all of my meals, Sonia reached her goal of 105 lbs.  I’m going to have to get hard core.

May Recap. We came very close to accomplishing goal #21, but in the end the landlord/owner didn’t inspire confidence.  We’re loving our decision to rescind the offer. In fact, just yesterday we had an awkward run in with the owner after she told us two weeks prior that she was leaving for Thailand. Anyway, the search continues.  While May was a productive month in regards to some of the larger goals, we/I only managed to knock two goals (#53 & 57) completely off of the list.  However, I feel lucky to have survived both the Swine Flu and an Ambien fueled car ride.

What’s done…

#53. Left-coasters suffer from something called June gloom.  Every year, usually in June, a Coastal Eddy blankets us with a month’s worth of fog for twenty hours a day.  Not yet June, we’ve already had to endure too many foggy days.  Fortunately the gloom doesn’t touch the desert which made the cocktails enjoyed during our weekend in Palm Springs that much more enjoyable.

#57. A life time of coffee and soda, not to mention some chewing tobacco use and abuse in college gave my teeth a not so perfect yellow tint. But after eight to ten weeks of Crest White Strips I’m happy to report that my teeth are closer to white than yellow. Getting better every day.

As for the ones we put a dent in…

#8. Haven’t calculated all of the numbers yet, but revenues continued to grow.  Overhead too.  First month with a new employee.

#19. Yep.

#21. Staying put is stress free.  Nice to take it slow.

#24. Tried for the first time, Mortons, Casa Bianca, The Counter and French 45. We also enjoyed our regular favorites.  In fact, not sure if we ate at home once this entire month. Tis the life.

#25. See #24

#81. Got the tickets.

That’s it. Off to June.

$910.  Not bad for five hours.  Even better, we got rid of a lot of junk we didn’t want.

Threw my back out just in time for the garage sale.

Saw Angels and Demons. I’d rather have my teeth pulled than watch this one again.  Which by the way is what Brit had done this morning.  I thought a movie would talk her mind off the pain once the Novocain wore off.  Not sure this Hank’s “masterpiece” helped much.

#57 Done. I was lecturing Brittany on the way to school today when she said, “jeez, your teeth are white.”  A couple of months worth of Crest White Strips has done a bang up job.

Began a course taught through Stanford devoted to developing applications for the iPhone.

It may have been the most uninteresting Memorial Day in a long time, but a major home cleaning was necessary.  We continue to prepare for a major garage sale that we will have next weekend. $1500 is the lofty goal.  Stay tuned.

Spent our weekend at UC Irvine watching Brittany and her team just miss the finals by a couple of points.  Her play continues to impress me.

Saw The Brother’s Bloom last night.  It was a creatively ambitious con man flick.  Liked not loved.

#24 in progress.  Lunched at the newly opened The Counter today.  My fourth burger in four days.  If you’re into opening a franchise (Sean), this one is a good one.

After moving up a division, the Wilshire Bombers are champions once again.

#21 STILL in progress.  95% sure this deal is falling through.  Despite the house needing little things here and there, we asked the sketchy caretaker, a diminutive Thai woman who turned out to be the owner, nothing except for a $300 safety repair job on the balcony’s railings in order to prevent any unnecessary deaths.  The owner refused and said that the railings were fine as long as no one leaned against them.  Well, we felt there was a good chance that someone would indeed do just that at least seven hundred and thirty times over the next, say, seven hundred and thirty days, so we stood firm.  It’s a great house, but I, represented by my former co-tenant Matt Lucey, have already taken one landlord to court and I don’t care to do it again.  Wouldn’t want to tarnish the one for one record.  Long story short, we’re still looking for our view.

#21 in progress.  The new abode. Moving in June.

Watched the Lakers barely win with my Dad, Sean and Sonia.  Won’t be a cake walk.

Add Star Trek to #23.  I was never a Trekkie, but this was watchable. Live long and prosper.

#21 in progress. Starting to look.  Fell in love with a place with a view that will ultimately break my heart.

Prom 2009.  More to come tomorrow.

Finished off the regular season with a 9-8 loss to a sub-par team.  Could’ve won the league, but we end up sharing the title with another team.  A truly pathetic finish.

#25 not really in progress. After demolishing a pulled pork sandwich, baked beans and a few brews I got to thinking, am I losing weight?  Well, turns out that I am not.  In fact, I may have added a few lbs.  How could this happen? Looking back on the week that was it is easy to see why the pounds aren’t flying off.  Over the past seven days I have eaten buckets of sushi, two burgers and fries, an enormous steak dinner, syrup and butter covered pancakes, a large pizza (not once, but twice), an all you can eat brunch, a big fat burrito, an all you can eat BBQ dinner, a few hot dogs, a bagel every morning and the above mentioned pulled pork sandwich.  Oh, and maybe a beer or two to wash it all down.  So why am I not losing weight?

#81 in progress. My dad let his Chicago office know that he would appreciate it if a few tickets to the Cubs vs. Reds game on July 24th were made available for our trip to the city.  A few hours later we had six seats locked and loaded. Few things are more enjoyable than a Friday day game at Wrigley. Thanks, Dad.

Back to the grind.  Burritos and Margaritas to cap off the work day.

Happy Mother’s Day from Lake Sherwood Country Club where we ate, drank and were more or less merry.  For some more pics from the day click here.

#24 in progress. Finally tried Casa Bianca in Eagle Rock, a down home Italian joint famous for its pizza.  We waited 45 minutes to be seated, another 45 minutes to be served, but in the end it was well worth it.  Great Za.

Dry Heat

#24 in progress. Took Sonia and Brittany to Morton’s for a steak dinner.  Despite spending eight or so years in the midwest I had never eaten at this Chicago staple.  I have to say, from apps to entree it was excellent.

#53 Done. Escaped to Palm Springs for a couple of days for a pre Mother’s Day celebration.  We scored the best poolside bed with amble shade for the 95+ temps.  Kindle + Food + Drinks + Pool is just what the doctor ordered.

Happy Odd Day.  Today’s date, 05/07/09, is a rare occurrence in that it consists of three consecutive odd numbers.  It is an event that happens only six times a century.  The first Odd Day of this century occurred on 01/03/05.  So if you’re feeling odd today now you know why.

Happy 5th of May.

Now who’s paranoid?  The Swine Flu has struck at Devin’s school and class has been canceled for at least a week. Fear the swine.