I spent the day waiting on an email or a phone call that might allow me to move a particular project forward. Futile, as it turned out. If nothing else, it gave me a chance to catch up on some of the blogs I subscribe to. (I highly recommend an RSS “reader” or “aggregator” to alert you when a blog you read has been updated — there are loads of free programs and services out there).

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My sister, who works for a large chain book store in Dallas, writes that next week Lauren Bacall will be at her store signing books. As she's already scheduled to be in town for the AFI film fest, it makes sense that she makes the rounds. Paula ponders: “I wonder if Miss Bacall would be offended if I showed up with a can of Fancy Feast for her to sign?” Hell, give it a try. Make a few test runs with a Sharpie on the upside of a cat food can to see if the signature won't rub off. And don't forget to video tape the whole request and signing, so that you have a better shot selling on eBay. I had forgotten those Fancy Feasts commercials. YouTube brought it all back. I had remembered that the pampered cat was served from crystal stemware, but I hadn't noticed before that the opening shot is a famous stock photo of a romantic medieval village on a Greek island. I know for a fact that THAT cat wouldn't stand for Purina products introduced into her Aegean villa. And then there's the matter of Ms. Bacall. How did the world's most beautiful woman make it from Key Largo and Dark Passage to hawking pet products? Maybe she should have never done those Rockford File episodes. The slippery slope must have began somewhere.

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On Pamela Ribons' blog, she's imagining a conversation between her and her girlfriends as they consider the possibility of a version of Wuthering Heights starring Johnny Depp and Angelina Jolie.

KATEY: That's…
PAMIE: I know. I know!
KATEY: Oh. Oh, my God.
LIZ: I just… God, I want to fuck that movie so hard.
PAMIE: I know! I want that movie inside of me.
KATEY: I so need that movie in me.
PAMIE: Right now. In me. Right here. I want that movie on my face. I want that movie screaming my name.
LIZ: Oh, my God. That is a seriously hot movie.
PAMIE: Even if it sucks, it's going to be SO AWESOME.
LIZ: I want to bend that movie over and just… oh, man!
KATEY: Why isn't everybody talking about this all the time?

I love these riffs Pamela does. I've never watched the Mind of Mencia, but I can only assume that her talents are wasted writing for that show.

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And Thorne, in a recent blog, writes about building a character he's going to play in my Short Ends film by analyzing the behavior of someone he observed while we shot last week. I was there watching him watch this guy. A double whammy of voyeurism. He likens this guy's bird-like movements to an Emu. He's right. I really enjoy watching people go through this sort of process to create a character. When I write, I do this sort of thing all the time. But because I'm tinkering with characters, revising while I write, the process isn't so apparent. Not even to me while I'm doing it. But for performers it's all about building up that character so that when the curtain rises or the camera starts to roll, it is all realized and ready to unfold.

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It was a grey lifeless day, with low banks of clouds occasionally dripping down with just a breath of rain. My weekly hike with Dar was re-scheduled for today. I decided to try Eisenhower Park, up near Camp Bullis. I had been there only two or three times before, with Pete and Cooper. On those occasions we had kept to the paved paths. Today me and Dar just meandered. We found some very nice rough and rocky trails.

She brought me up to speed on her film festival, SAL (San Antonio Local). This will be the first year for SAL, as well as the two film events I'm hired to promote (Josiah and the 48 Hour Film Project). We are already exchanging information and contacts, but it occurred to me that we probably need to sit down with a couple of people who've experience running these sorts of things for some years already. People like Adam Rocha and Denise Crettenden.

What a lot of work. I'm exhausted just thinking about it. Truly, life would be so much easier were I living in a villa on Corfu with an aging Hollywood starlet serving me dinner out of a can … and placed into crystal stemware. No cares, no woes.