Long time, no blog

Hi there!

I haven't updated the blog in a while mainly because there isn't a ton of stuff going on. I can't do my blog like Kevin Smith does his and tell you what I had to eat every day and stuff like that. But the last couple of weeks have been fairly interesting, so I'll get caught up now.

A couple of weekends ago, my friend Johny Kinsman and his girlfriend Lindsey came through town and stayed here for a couple of nights. He is a buddy of mine from back in Massachusetts. He's an actor living in L.A. now and they had gone back to Boston to pick up some stuff and a car that they were driving back to California. John co-starred in and co-produced the movie that we made in New York almost three years ago. Anyway, we always like throwing around new movie ideas and things like that and I had one that I had been saving because I thought it was something we could produce ourselves very quickly and very cheaply if we could just take a week or so and go to Cape Cod at some point. It's a goofy comedy idea about some friends that put on a whiffle ball tournament.

Well, John loved the idea. We ended up staying up until 4 AM on that first night, just throwing out ideas, characters, and scenes. Then he stayed an extra day so we could work on it even more. Although the more we worked on it, the bigger the whole thing became. Then he got back to L.A. and met with a new friend of his, another writer. Apparently this guy knows a producer who makes straight-to-video movies with budgets of a few million bucks, and this producer is actively looking for scripts right now (comedy and horror). So that's what we're aiming for now. Meanwhile, the story itself has gone from a subtle, pseudo-documentary small movie to a much broader, wilder, "Dodgeball," type story. We've been working on it essentially every day since John left here, with me writing script pages and e-mailing them to him, with him sending back changes, comments, etc. It's working pretty well, as we're almost done with a first draft. I think we're on page 73 of what will probably end up being a 100 page script. And we're already planning to write a vampire flick as a follow up after we sell this one for a few hundred grand. Piece of cake!

Other than that, the physical therapy has been keeping me busy. I go three times a week and the knee is gradually getting better. I still can't bend it as much as I'd like, but at least it's stronger than it was. I hope that it improves even more over the next few weeks, especially the range of motion. I have two more P.T. appointments this week and three scheduled for the following week, with a follow up doctor's appointment after that. I hope that it just keeps getting better...since the WSOP Main Event starts three weeks from today.

I've been playing a lot of poker too, with mixed results. There are two things that bother me about it: first off, there is just no way to simulate the actual tournament. Any on-line tournament just moves too fast compared to what the structure will be like at the real thing. For example: in No Limit Hold 'Em tournaments, there are two forced bets called "blinds" on every hand. They are at a set amount and they go up in stakes periodically. In any on line tournament, the blinds go up somewhere around every six to ten minutes. At the Main Event, they only start at $25-$50 (out of $10,000) and go up every two hours. This means that players can be patient and wait for good hands, which is a style that fits well with how I play. But on line, I can't do that at all. The other thing is that I'd really like to log some time at real-life tables before the tournament starts. But as it stands now, it might have to wait until I get to Vegas. I definitely plan on playing some warm up action out there on July 5 and 6. And in another week or so, I should find out what my first day will be for the tourney: July 7, 8, or 9.

So that's what I've been up to. Nothing really new or earth-shattering. I'm starting to get pretty stir cray at home and I really hope the doc clears me to start driving again after I see him on June 29. I've lasted this long, so I guess I can make it a few more weeks.