The Future of Television (Thoughts)

The first few paragraphs of this are personal ramblings. If you want to get to the meat of my valueless essay, just skip ahead. 

I wrote a pilot this month.

It's a 22-minute sitcom that centers around a group of misfits who use friendship and love as a means to overcome their day-to-day struggles - groundbreaking, I know. 

I don't have high hopes for the pilot. Well, that's not entirely true. I'm submitting it to Slamdance and the Austin Film Fest. I know in my head that I probably won't be any kind of finalist, but in my heart I'm still the same 16 year old who believes that he can have everything if he just puts himself out there.

(Getting turned down for 3+ jobs in the past four months have somehow not subdued those feelings). 

Writing the pilot itself was really easy. I was helping my girlfriend prepare for work one evening when I made a joke. It wasn't just any joke, it was one of those perfect jokes that comes out of nowhere and contains the perfect blend of cleverness, conciseness and immaturity. It was a mind-clearing moment. 

I made that joke and then I just couldn't stop. I whipped out my screenwriting shareware and set out to create a universe for those jokes to live in. I wrote five pages the first night and spent hours in bed just typing out more jokes, character beats and plot points on my phone.

In a shocking display of follow through, I actually wrote more the next day. (Normally my creative ambitions shine bright like a diamond only to quickly opaque like some lesser gem). 

Within a week, I'd spit out 23 pages. 

With the submission deadlines for the competitions weeks away, I figured I'd have plenty of time to polish the script and make it tighter and funnier. 

The bullshitting begins here.

Unfortunately, my thunderstorm of creativity subsided and I was left bereft of creative ideas. Rather than sit in front of the computer and try to power through with great material, I did what every lazy creative does and sought out inspiration. 

Two of my favorite shows that are on right now are Fox's The Mindy Project and ABC's Happy Endings. They're both funny, they both have a little heart and I think that they both are a precursor for what's to come in the world of the sitcom. 

Happy Endings is basically a 21st century version of Friends (a comparison the show lampshades) - a bunch of near thirty-somethings hanging out for unreasonable amounts of time and cracking jokes at each other's expense. 

The show hits a lot of the same beats that my writing does, lots of pop culture reference, wordplay and the aforementioned lamp shading. It's also got everything I need in a show to make me feel like the enlightened modern American that I am. An interracial couple! A non-threatening gay guy! A vaguely sexual title with no connection to the content of the show! Foodtrucks!

It's also my favorite Wayans' vehicle since Major Payne. 

(This trailer is spectacularly well edited. You know going in exactly what to expect. Also, I laughed out loud when the commander informed Payne that there was no one left to kill because he'd already killed them all - I've seen this movie 20+ times)

Add what is possibly the cheeriest opening score for any sitcom on right now and you've got one Happy Kyle. (Alternate title if the show's protagonist had the same name that I do). 

The Mindy Project is similarly delightful. It follows a rom-com obsessed OBGYN's quest to find love in The Big Apple (New York City, New York). 

The Mindy Project may be the most tightly written sitcom on TV right now. Every episode is perfectly paced and each character gets enough screen time to remind you that they're all great. Every time I watch an episode, I email my friend Jordan and tell him to watch it. He lives in Korea where I'm certain there isn't huge demand for sitcoms about cute Indian doctors, but I demand it of him nonetheless. 

As much as I love genre breaking shows like Arrested Development and Community, I have a ton of respect for the people behind TMP (Mindy Kaling) and Happy Endings (David Caspe).

I think it almost takes more skill to work within an established genre and still produce a smart, funny show.

I was listening to a podcast recently with Chuck Klosterman and Alex Pappademas where Chuck mentioned that there has been a reaction against the Auteur Theory. People are losing trust in the idea of the godlike creator. 

You can see this in the direction that programming as a whole is headed. As Mad Men and Breaking Bad are coming to a close, there haven't been many successful recent programs put out that exist as conduits for the voice of the creator. 

(I'd even argue that Breaking Bad isn't as auteurish as say The Sopranos or Mad Men. Alan Sepinwall's book goes into the BB creative process in depth, and it seems that Gilligan isn't as heavily involved as some other prestigious showrunners). 

Even previous giants of the industry (Davids Simon and Milch) haven't found much success with recent projects. (Treme and Luck, if you're wondering). 

AMC, who made a name on two of the best shows of the past decade, is floundering to come up with anything of value in the original programming department. Rubicon and The Killing failed, Hell on Wheels was nothing special and The Walking Dead, while hugely successful, is pure garbage from a narrative standpoint. 

(I just watched the Major Payne trailer again. Still great). 

On the other side of the coin (comedy, as opposed to drama) the only network that dared take any risks, NBC, is a laughingstock. The Dan Harmon experiment clearly failed and even though Mike Schur is brilliant and Parks and Rec is spectacular, the show doesn't pull terribly great ratings. (Any show that airs an episode featuring 20+ references to Infinite Jest probably isn't going to take America by storm).

(Learning from P&R, I deleted a David Foster Wallace reference earlier in this entry so as not to alienate my audience). 

The only network that is still chugging along by allowing its creative voices to have total control is FX. FX was one of the first networks to start producing really good, creative television, both comedy and drama (The Shield/It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia), and they've continued that legacy with Archer, Justified and The League. 

Even then, FX is still potentially screwing the pooch by splitting up the network and diluting their brand. 

HBO is a bit of an outlier in all of this, because they're not beholden to advertisers and can basically do whatever they want.

However, I feel that Girls is both the apex and the nadir of the auteur movement in television. It's the best and worst of what that type of vision engenders. It's a sign of the end of an era. 

I think we're about to hit a new phase in the Television Renaissance. Auteur productions are no longer tenable for networks and studios. The good thing is that the new crop of TV writers have been so influenced by the genre breaking shows that the quality of more traditional work is leaps and bounds better than Friends, Two and a Half Men, etc. 

(In addition to being more in tune with the times, Happy Endings differs from Friends in that it is actually funny - as opposed to fun and familiar).

What we're going to find in the future are more traditional shows with amazingly talented writing staffs serving as incubators for new, better content. 

You can already see this with The Mindy Project. Kaling spent years with Greg Daniels, Mike Schur and BJ Novak on The Office (which, while stale now, was at one point the best comedy on television. Y'all remember when it was hip to like The Office?) and is using that kind of emotional, intelligent writing in a more traditional sitcom format.

The preponderance of online content is helping as well - Mail Order Comedy, Human Giant, Derrick Comedy, etc., have all gone on to do excellent work for networks and on cable.

The future of television comedy is very bright. (Especially once my script gets fast-tracked!)

Drama is a different story.

I think, to make a drama of value, you need that strong, singular creative voice. You also need networks willing to take risks on these voices. 

As it stands, there appears to be a dearth of both of those things.

The same thing that's working in comedy's favor (lots of talented people being influenced by older innovators) is actually working against drama. 

It's easy to be funny in your early twenties. It's much harder to produce something with depth. The fundamental lack of life experience is a legitimate handicap. 

It's doable to watch Community and say, "I'm going to be Dan Harmon!" and go out and write a subversive comedy. It's a lot more difficult to watch The Wire and say, "I'm going to be David Simon!" and go out and write one of the best pieces of American fiction ever created. 

I think drama writing takes time and practice. You have to develop your chops. 

Just look at the people who are best at it.

David Chase wrote for TV for twenty years before he created The Sopranos. Milch wrote for NYPD Blue. Simon was a reporter for decades. Matthew Weiner worked on The Sopranos and learned from Chase. Kurt Sutter worked on The Shield. Vince Gilligan worked on X-Files.

Drama is a much more slowly ripening fruit than comedy. 

The other thing hindering drama is that it's difficult for a serialized, hour-long show to find an audience. As such, networks and studios don't want to invest in something that will probably fail. Instead, they gravitate toward easily digestible pablum. Hyper-violent, hyper-stylized and hyper-shallow spooky schlock seems to be particularly en vogue. 

I don't know what started it. Probably the success of True Blood and Dexter (Dexter, while sometimes repetitive and featuring some of the worst acting from secondary characters that I've ever seen, is clever enough to escape my avenging bludgeon of criticism), but it seems that every network is coming out with a high-concept horror vehicle. The Following. American Horror Story. Hannibal. Even lowly A&E is getting in on the action with Bates Motel. 

These things are cyclical, of course. A few years back, every network was trying to create their own Lost (a show that's a good example of what happens when showrunners with lots of freedom aren't meticulous and domineering enough). This too, shall pass.

In short, I don't have high hopes for drama in the coming years. Hopefully young writers are able to cut their teeth on the some of the solid content still being produced while the networks soak in their creative fart hot tub for a while. In five years or so, maybe drama will be as exciting and unpredictable as comedy is setting up to be.

(I'm particularly interested in what happens post-Mad Men. Most of the show's writers are women, and outside of aforementioned Girls, female showrunners are fairly rare. There should be an influx of previously unheard voices).

Anyway, I think a lot about TV. Keep an eye out for my pilot when it hits the trades. There's going to be a hell of a bidding war!

 

How We Talk When We Talk About Johnny Manziel (Ombudsmandry)

For those of you who may not know, Johnny Manziel, a redshirt freshman quarterback for Texas A&M won the Heisman Trophy last season (the first freshman to do so) and guided the Aggies to an 11-2 record and a no. 5 finish in the AP Poll.

I'm reminded of this nearly every day because Manziel's exploits, both on the field and off, are meticulously documented through social and traditional media. America can't get enough of the legend of Johnny Football. That's right, grown men are unabashedly and unironically calling a 20-year old kid "Johnny Football" (Johnny Fucking Football, if you're not into the whole brevity thing). 

Since winning the Heisman and beating Oklahoma in the Cotton Bowl. Manziel has been spotted sitting courtside at various sporting events, earned a new Mercedes, took in Mardi Gras in New Orleans, done his level best to avoid contact with actual Aggie fans, was declared the "King of Cabo" by TMZ and met rapper/former Degrassi hero Drake. (I bet he calls him Aubrey). 

Johnny Manziel is America's hero. He's the rootinest, tootenist quarterback since Broadway Joe. He's living the dream of every poor schlub with long dashed d-1 aspirations. He's got talent, fame and, apparently, unlimited access to basically everything. 

Think on that readers, dwell on that, dwell on the fact that Manziel basically exists as a youthful surrogate for your average football fan.

Now... imagine if Manziel was black. 

Did I just blow your mind? Did I just go Toure on your ass?

Ok, so don't actually imagine the Johnny Manziel is black - that's a weird and unproductive thought exercise. 

Instead imagine that, out of nowhere, a black freshman quarterback put on an electric season, won the Heisman trophy and then proceeded to party his ass off for the ensuing four months - popping dom in the club with his parents, driving an expensive car and trolling his own fanbase. 

There would be mass hysteria! It's pure, unadulterated gloryboyism! 

Imagine with me, if you will, if that same athlete had been arrested only a few weeks prior to the start of the season for scrapping in a bar district and using a fake ID? (It should be noted that Manziel missed no playing time for this, and his punishment was handled internally).

Why he'd not only be a glory boy, but also a thug! He'd be no good to anyone. Awarding him the Heisman trophy would be a disgrace to the good name of the Downtown Athletic club. (Gregg Easterbrook would personally bar the doors to the event).

"But Kyle," you say, "we're living in post-accidental racist America. Surely you're trying to make mountains out of molehills?"

I counter, "Bullshit." 

There was another electric young quarterback who recently came out of nowhere to destroy SEC offensive records and win a Heisman Trophy. Like Johnny Manziel, the fans have also given him a charming nickname. 

Perhaps you're familiar with $cam Newton? 

Newton's no innocent (he was kicked out of Florida for stealing a laptop and someone in has family probably received a hefty sum for delivering him to Auburn), but he certainly doesn't deserve the amount of vitriol that is routinely leveled at him via sports radio and online forums. 

You may argue that Cam is actually castigated because he allegedly took money to play at Auburn and thus violated the romanticized notion that all college players are just dedicated "student-athletes" playing to lift the spirits of their fellow young scholars. If intimations of untoward behavior are all it takes to stain an athlete forever, I point toward Manziel's sudden influx of discretionary cash and priority access to basketball games. After I'm done pointing at that, I'll point toward A&M's own illustrious history.

(Ahem...)

But, if you still think Cam is a false equivalency, turn instead to former Oklahoma State star (and apparent nightclub enthusiast) Dez Bryant. Prior to being drafted into the NFL, Bryant was asked by Miami Dolphins' GM Jeff Ireland if his mother was a prostitute. That question is not only utterly inappropriate, but also oh wow yeah kind of racist. 

Even more egregious than Ireland's questioning was the Palm Beach Post's Ben Volin claiming that Bryant's recent behavior justifies what Ireland asked. Go home America - clearly racism is solved. 

"Ok," you concede, "maybe there is a little bit of double standard. Maybe black athletes are more highly scrutinized and more harshly judged than white ones, but why single out Johnny Football?" 

Let's delve back into that arrest report from earlier:

Seaton says an officer on bike patrol intervened to break up a fight between Manziel and McKinney. McKinney told the officer that Brant, Manziel's friend, called him a racial slur and he approached 

Brant. Seaton says Manziel then shoved McKinney and the two exchanged punches.

The arrest that kicked off the legend of Johnny Football all started because Manziel felt that he was honor-bound to defend his friend's right to degrade a passing pedestrian with a slur. 

Of course, that's all dependent on whether or not the police report is true. It's possible that McKinney embellished the story, or that Manziel didn't hear Brant say what he said.

Regardless, it's odd to me that no one in the national media has asked about this particular part of the incident, if only to get a good soundbite of Manziel admonishing such behavior.

Instead, it's swept under the rug, it's not something that's fun to talk about.

Just like it's not fun to talk about the incredible chasm between the way in which Manziel is received and the way previous, black, college superstars have been received. 

It's a difficult thing to write about. First, one must prove that there is a clear difference in public perception - which is pretty hard to do - and even then, the type of person who doesn't want to think about these kind of things will claim that there is no difference and that the writer is merely "race-baiting" (the preferred phrase of anyone avoiding introspection for the past forty years).

Beyond that, what purpose does such an observation actually serve? It tells us that football fans may be racist (however inadvertently) and may have a selective bias about whether or not an athlete's behavior offends him or her, but that's not news. 

What does the legend of Johnny Football tell us about America?

I think the most basic (and, again, not unexplored answer) is that white behavior is still very much held up as normative. When a black athlete indulges in the perks that come with talent it's seen as aberrant and detrimental to "The Game" - the sport-above-sport from which all punditry flows. 

When a white athlete partakes in similar indulgences, he is praised for having fun out there and doing what anyone would do in his situation. 

Of course, my conclusions about all of this could be wrong, but I'm dead certain that the way we're ignoring this double standard is a black eye on sports journalism as a whole. 

Radio (A Rant)

I've spent a lot of time driving lately.

My girlfriend, Lindsey, recently took a job in Round Rock and, rather than fight the traffic every morning, she's found herself an apartment near her work.

Seeing as I am the one with loads of free time on my hands and no real responsibilities, I've taken it upon myself to be the one to make the 17 mile trek to her apartment whenever I want to see her.

This means that I spend a good 30-40 minutes per day in the car. Seeing as it's April, I'm usually in a position to listen to the Astros valiantly flail about in the AL West while I'm driving. Unfortunately, today, the Astros had already lost by the time I was driving home and my iPhone was dead - rendering Spotify unavailable.

This meant that I was beholden to the caprices of terrestrial radio. I absentmindedly flipped through the stations until I found something acceptable - your standard top-40 stuff. After enjoying a little Adele, this song came on.

This is pure, unrepentant garbage.

In the first four seconds, the listener gains all she ever will from the song. There's a drumbeat, a few chords on the piano and the line:

I feel so close to you right now 

Being close to someone is a reasonable subject for a song, but it takes a turn toward turdliness immediately after that sentiment.

It's a forcefield

What is a force field? Closeness? Love?

Love is a great many things, and I suppose that it could be seen as a forcefield. Love often protects us from the worst parts of the world and the worst parts of ourselves, but here, divorced from any context, this line is meaningless.

Calvin Harris, the songwriter, continues.=:

I wear my heart upon my sleeve, like a big deal

Well we've solved the mystery of the forcefield. Apparently its chief utility is that it somewhat rhymes with the word "deal." Harris' heart is on his sleeve. He's not afraid to let the world know that he is surrounded by a forcefield of closeness. He will not hide his inanity from the hostile masses.

Your love pours down on me, surrounds me like a waterfall

This line isn't terrible, but it's not particularly meaningful either.

And there's no stopping us right now

Harris and his lover cannot be stopped.

I feel so close to you right now

The coda! Harris also gets to rhyme "now" with "now" thus making his job easier.

These same six lines are then repeated ad nauseum for the next four minutes, over the same simple hook.

Clearly, this song is devoid of any meaning or artistry. It's only value appears to be that it's simple and catchy.

There is no truth in this art.

It's just some simple rhymes that are tangentially related to some vague notion of love and commitment. No one learns anything from this song, no one can relate to this song - its meaninglessness makes it inherently unrelatable.

The question, then, is why is this song being played on the radio? No human being can actually enjoy it. It's not going to inspire anyone either personally or creatively. Two years from now, this song will be a relic remember by no one.

This isn't an indictment of pop music by any stretch. I enjoy a lot "disposable" art. I listen to Katy Perry's Peacock at least twice a month. But Katy Perry's music is fun. When you listen to Katy Perry, you're immediately excused from being a normal human being. Consuming her music is a conscious decision to give yourself over to a form of cartoonish hedonism for three minutes and fifteen seconds. You're granted a reprieve from being yourself and instead become the type of person who enjoys a song about passing out on a Friday night or being abducted by Kanye West.

By contrast, Harris' song does nothing. There is no catharsis in "I Feel so Close to You Right Now." It's music that is meant to be ignored.

This cannot stand. There is enough good pop music being produced right now, that there's no reason that Calvin Harris should ever destroy the integrity of the airwaves with his schlocky bullshit.

I implore all of you to write to Music and let them know that you're fed up. Only when we raise our voices as one will we be able to achieve justice.

Here's a palate cleanser to help choke down that spoonful of aural trash.

What I've Been Up To (An Update)

I've always had a complicated relationship with math. It started in the first grade.

I'd been aware of the joys of reading for several years (though most of the literature I consumed dealt with dinosaurs), but I had yet to be introduced to the world of arithmetic. I made it through kindergarten alright, when the only hurdle I had to overcome was being able to count from 1 to 100, but when they started throwing adding and subtracting into the mix I was overwhelmed.

I grasped addition fairly quickly (it is, after all, the cousin of counting), but subtraction alluded me. I remember very distinctly one of my first math assignments. It was a worksheet with a number of problems that I had to solve. (In my memory it was something like 25 questions, but my experience teaching second graders leads me to believe it was closer to 10).

It was a mix of addition and subtraction problems, which I understood. What I didn't understand, was how to subtract. So, in a moment of juvenile earnestness, I simply added every problem, confident that it was "close enough."

Shockingly, my first grade teacher, Ms. Dawn, didn't find my outside-the-box approach to mathematics as acceptable as I did, so she had a conversation with my mother about my struggles. In an attempt to aid my understanding, my parents sat down with me that night to work on math together.

My dad, an engineer and therefore a competent mathematician, explained to me that subtraction was just reverse addition, which turned out be exactly what I needed to make the concept click.

After that initial struggle, I traipsed ably through my elementary school curriculum. (It helped that most math at that level can be taught through the power of song.) I made straight-As and was in the gifted and talented program. I aced the TAAS in fourth grade (or I would have, had I not filled in the wrong bubble on one the scantron questions - I circled all the correct answers in my workbook).

My success continued in fifth grade, but fifth grade is also the time in one's life where you start to formulate a conception of yourself as an academic. I could certainly do math, I just didn't like math. I was a literary mind - a writer. So I naturally decided that math was not for me.

The sixth grade was where this newfound identity manifested itself into something with actual consequences. We started learning the most basic algebra - x + 4 = 5 and whatnot - and my struggles reemerged.

Come math time, my class was divided into groups. Those who understood the concepts got to stay in the classroom, while those who didn't had to retire to the desks in the hall and receive help from our student teacher.

Invariably, I would start in the classroom, become overwhelmed, and then request to go into the hall. After five or ten minutes, everything would click and I'd ask to be returned to the classroom.

I feel like I must have grasped the material, but I had decided that I was not good at math and therefore I became not good at math until I grew bored of being with the remedial students.

At my junior high, everyone was tracked. I was in the middle math track, and my teacher was an overweight woman who wore flowing purple pantsuits everyday - kind of like Stevie Nicks mixed with   Violet after she chewed Willy Wonka's three course gum. I remember that her name was Gigi, because she signed everything G^2 and was quite proud of that little pun.

Her room was always dark, illuminated only by the overhead projector. She kept a drawer of snacks in her room that she always fished in when we were working.

Looking back, I think she was probably depressed. She was always on the verge of crying, and did so every once in a while.

This, obviously, made her a target of 7th grade ridicule.

Anyway, she wasn't a terribly able math teacher. She'd been in the game for a long time and didn't seem to care whether her students learned or not.

I sloughed through her class alright, but there was no foundation for more advanced math really instilled in me - which didn't bother me in the slightest.

Eighth grade is where I had my first crisis of self. My teacher was a young guy just out of college. Our class didn't take him seriously and he returned the favor. I spent most of my math period vacillating between trying to distract the teacher and dicking around with my friends. This strategy didn't do much to facilitate any learning and, after one particularly inattentive six weeks, I took home my first and only C on my report card.

I don't know what my parents made of it. I think they were mostly flummoxed by their son. When I was 13 there were only two things I cared about - becoming a comedy writer and classic rock. I'm sure it was confusing to them when their son who, the year previous, had insisted on wearing Abercrombie and once loudly protested when his mother took him to Kohl's that he "didn't wear that kind of stuff anymore" had now switched to wearing exclusively black t-shirts from hot topic and Chuck Taylor's with ZOSO symbols drawn all over them.

(My life has been a procession of ill advised fashion decisions made in an effort to fit in. In 5th grade, when I wanted to be an athlete, I wore my baseball pullover everywhere. I also had a Braves hat from my little league days that I had frayed (because my cousin wore a frayed baseball cap) to the point that the fabric was not attached in the front and the plastic of the bill lay proudly exposed. I also insisted on wearing the hat into any body of water (natural or artificial) that I entered - this, too, was a signifier of my coolness. Seventh grade saw the aforementioned flirtation with proto-Jersey Shore apparel. Then there were the band shirts, which I defiantly wore during high school retreat of my freshman year to make sure that everyone at Trinity knew that I was cool and not bound by the crushing authority of their dress code. When I discovered girls in ninth grade I switched to American Apparel, which was the worst choice for me because all of their clothes are cut for boxy future frat-bros. When I bought Hot Fuss, I was determined to become indie-cool like Brandon Flowers and, in the most regrettable fashion decision of my life, I once wore a black tie over an army green Fender t-shirt to youth group. My senior year, I was introduced to the v-neck and my wardrobe has remained pretty consistent since then. It should also be noted that throughout all of these transitions I lacked both the fashion sense and a profligate enough mother to buy more than one or two pieces - so I just wore the same ensemble repeatedly, or some horrible mishmash of conflicting styles.)

To return to the narrative, my insistence on spending more time on learning the various guitars that Jimmy Page played on each album rather than on how to calculate the volume of a cylinder had rendered me utterly inept at math. I don't quite recall how this resolved itself. I have a vague memory of my parents and math teach and I having a conversation during the mandatory parent-teacher meetings where I pledged to focus more in class, which led to an uptick in my GPA.

The last time I succeeded in math was my freshman year of high school with Mrs. Wolcott (Connie, as I came to call her once I graduated and played World of Warcraft with her and her family for untold hours during the summer).

I spent my next two years with Dr. Hickey bumbling through algebra and pre-cal. I spent most of my time in Dr. Hickey's class curating CDs for us to listen to during tests (they were heavy on Journey and Sufjan Stevens) or listening to one of my more unsavory female classmates discuss her sexual misadventures with a sympathetic male classmate, who I imagine listened more out of prurient interest than anything approaching concern.

I took physics as a junior and did quite well, but it's only because our teacher was excellent. Even then, I failed to retain anything and in the week between the end of the semester and the final I had forgotten enough physics to make a 70 on the final and bring my average from an A to a B.

I renounced math entirely as a senior and instead took statistics, which is math for the unmotivated. The early days of the semester were spent watching videos on the importance of stats. Unfortunately for Dr. Hickey, one video discussed manatees at length and my friend Jeth and I latched onto them as our spirit animal and proceeded to draw them on everything. My other friend Donnie openly slept through class and the remainder of the students (all female) diligently worked with Dr. Hickey. I took the AP test at the end of the year and earned a gentleman's 2.

I took one college math course. It was called "Contemporary Math." It was taught by a bored TA and the most challenging thing we tackled was adding and subtracting fractions.

All of that to say, I'm trying to learn math again.

While visiting Mrs. Wolcott this Christmas, I flipped through one of my old math books and was shamed by my lack of knowledge. I've always been a bit sensitive about this deficiency in my learning - my roommates are engineers and my ignorance is a source of occasional humor - but I'd never thought to do anything about. The afternoon after visiting Mrs. Wolcott, I resolved to become more well rounded and ordered two of my high school textbooks off of Abebooks.

When they arrived in Austin, I promptly abandoned my commitment and they lay buried under third class mail on our dining room table.

When I graduated, I was fairly certain that I'd find a job within weeks. I had a great GPA and tons of internship and freelance experience. I sent my resume to twenty newspapers that had posted openings for sportswriters. I received exactly one reply and it was simply a courtesy response.

My dreams of being the next Dave Halberstam temporarily shelved, I started applying for jobs in the corporate communications world. I got one interview and I was almost certain that I would be hired. It's been three months since that meeting, so I assume I probably didn't get it.

My dad told me about an opening at his company in Dallas. I had a meeting with the head of the department and she was incredibly nice and the job sounded interesting, but I feel bad taking a job because of my father's influence. I know that this is how these things work, but it would still bother me.

In order to escape this fate, I've established a backup plan.

I've applied to UT's Arabic Flagship Summer Program in hopes of a) learning Arabic and b) setting myself up for graduate school. I have my eye on UT's dual-degree Middle Eastern Studies and Global Policy Studies master's program.

In order to get into the program, it's recommended that one have 6 hours of economics, 3 hours of stats and 3 hours of calc. In order to obtain this modest amount of quantitative knowledge, I've enrolled at Austin Community College, which is shockingly lax about basically everything. They needed no confirmation of my place of residence, nor my up-to-date immunization. I'm taking an online economics course and dominating it. I'm also taking stats through EdX, which is the big free online class thing that schools like MIT, Berkley, UT and others are doing. It's surprisingly difficult. I feel like I'm really learning something.

If all goes according to plan, I'll apply for grad school in the fall and enroll next August.

All of this meditating on the future has led me to realize something. Chiefly, that I never made any real effort of pursuing what I really want to do, of attacking an actual dream.

The first thing that I ever remember wanting to be (other than a paleontologist, which is decidedly less cool than Jurassic Park makes it appear) was a writer for Saturday Night Live. I read Live From New York when I was in the 7th grade and in the 8th grade I took drama for the first time (out of two times). I loved playing improv games and making up skits and generally acting a fool. It's around this time that I realized that I was a funny human being.

Somehow, my sense of humor hasn't fallen prey to my usual flights of hubris. It's always taken the backseat to more lofty aspirations like blogging about my feelings.  I've always felt that I was funny, but I never defined myself as the funny guy. It's not a skill that I've honed, but I'd like to change that.

I still plan on applying to grad school, but I'm also going to take my first shot at being an actual writer. I've already written a pilot and I'm working on refining it. Oddly enough, the humor has been the easiest part for me. The dialogue is what's hard. It's basically impossible to make written characters sound like actual human beings, which is fine if you're going for a deliberate aesthetic, but is tough when the characters are all channeling a particularly low-energy voice (my voice).

I plan to submit the finished script to Austin Film Fest and to Slamdance. I'm sure I'm being just spectacularly naive in this endeavor, but what else am I going to do? I'm a man with a dream and an insane amount of free time.