"Ducks never say die."

Not just back, but back and in charge.  As in “my boss is off this week so now I'm the boss.”  And that's the extent of the excitement.  You reach a point where you realize that being the boss just means more Excedrin.  Today is Monday though, so instead of creating a headache, what we have is an illustration of a special source of inspiration.

The faith of others.

There was a wonderful line in A Town Like Alice when Noel and Jean are speaking and she says, "I only did what anyone would do," and he replies, "But the fact remains, my dear, that you did it."  When someone puts their faith in you, they believe that you are someone who will do it.  They don't know

Quack Quack Quack Quack Quack, Mr. Ducksworth!

what sort of struggle you may have going on inside your head - the doubt, the fear, the malaise that must be overcome, or even the bitterness of being imposed upon again to bake sixteen pies.  They only know that when push comes to shove, you will get it done.  That takes faith and to be asked means you have inspired that faith.  Take inspiration from that fact.

When I was growing up I was very fortunate to have people around me that encouraged me to try different things and to succeed and fail on my own, without the help of a naysaying peanut gallery.  I specifically remember one family picnic when I was 13.  It was decided by a few older members of the family that everyone should run the local 10k occurring the next month.  (I was probably the only one there who was completely sober.)  My uncle the runner/ring leader drew up a training plan (I was not a runner - 1/2 mile was my limit) that had me running the race route in three weeks with the race itself just four short weeks away.  "No problem," he said.  On the napkin it looked easy.  Just a couple of numbers a week and while they got bigger, they didn’t get that big.  Then the reality of being dropped off three, four, and six miles from home hit - I had to make it back on my own.  Or be eaten by a bear.

I did make it home.  On race day I was ready.  More than ready.  Won a trophy with a 52 minute elapsed time -  I don't remember the seconds.  I never thought I could run a 10k, never would have tried, but someone else (my uncle) had faith, insisted I could do it.  I chose to listen and was successful.  The rest of the family?  They, ah, didn't run (except said uncle.)  For whatever reason, they didn't take the inspiration that was handed to them – his faith that they could do it.

Don't squander your inspiration.  You don't need to be inspired about what to create, you already have a story to tell or you wouldn't want to be a writer.  Be inspired to do it.

"Yes, yes, she was born free and she has the right to live free. Why don't we live in a more comfortable setting George? Other people do. We chose to live out here cause it represents freedom for us. Because we can breathe."

It’s Must See TV Thursday so I’ll give you the quick rundown but TV isn’t where things are at today.  This vacation blast of live TV included a few stages of the Tour de France, the first episode of “Good Luck Charlie”, “American Ninja Challenge” – or something like that, “Wipe-out”, and “America’s Got Talent”.  I was surprised by AGT.  I’d never seen it (I don’t watch broadcast TV at home) and it was soooooooo much better than that Idol show.  It’s the first time I’ve ever liked Howard Stern.  We also liked that Ninja show, it was sort of like a serious “Wipe-out” and the idea of extreme obstacle course racing was intriguing but there was too much filler for me to become a regular.  It was more of an encouragement to hit the kettlebells harder.

I've always gone for immersion experiences – reading Ludlum on European business trips or Hemingway when working with the more highfalutin type of client.  I took it to a new level yesterday.  As you may recall A Town Like Alice and one of the main characters in the story is the Malay jungle.  There are mosquitoes and such fevers as dengue and malaria.  Many people groaning in agony at being consumed by bugs literal and figurative.  We took a hike yesterday through the woods to see some waterfalls.  The trails were flooded, the air was thick with the humidity, and within a few moments of entering beneath the shaded canopy, we were beset upon by the hungry hoard.  I killed a full score during the first engagement, my mates having similar results.

from a previous post, I’m reading Nevil Shute’s

For the next 45 minutes we were pursued by the blood-thirsty things.  It was something I haven’t experienced in years.  I was constantly reminded of the WWII POW's in the jungle and thinking, “This isn’t so bad.  My air conditioned van isn't that far away.”  And we got to see the falls.

Later that night my wife and I bathed the burning forehead of #3 as his body voided itself of everything it had consumed over the last month.  Not content with that, it tried to also clear out everything it was going to eat in the future.  I will admit that I've been to a few places where there have been some folks who really, really got into throwing up and none of those people had anything on the full-body effort or blood curdling, finger nail on blackboard vocal accompaniment of that poor child.  I’m so glad it wasn't dengue.  He seems fine this morning but again, I was thrust fully into the plight of those historically fictitious women and children.  Perhaps all the more so because I had just put the book down when the sickness came and it had appeared that they (the characters) might be through the worst of it.

Now, please forgive a flashback on the power of cinema.  When I was a small boy, very small, I wandered into the living room while my parents were watching a show.  I didn't know what it was but but there were soldiers so I was instantly captivated.  They had taken a man prisoner and led him through a street to the outside of a building where they nailed his hands to the wall and whipped him until his body just hung limply on the nails.  I knew nothing of the story, just that scene, with the man defiant until the end, the soldiers obeying the commands of their leader, the crowd of people watching in horror but helpless under guard, and mostly seeing his hands nailed like that.  I remember talking to my parents about how you could see that they didn't really nail his hands; the spikes went between his fingers.  It didn’t matter, the story was too powerful, I always saw the nails going through his hands.  For years I was haunted by what had been portrayed in that anonymous scene more than thirty years ago.  I can still see it in my mind’s eye.  I could picture it perfectly last night when I read it in A Town Like Alice.

Today is Independence Day in the United States.  There’s a reason it’s called that.

"A couple of us sneaked a look at his personnel file the day he arrived. It's his IQ."

I'm taking tomorrow off from work to go camping with my boys.  No girls.  In fact, the name of the expedition is "The No Girls Allowed Campout" just so that there's no confusion.  Apparently the ladies of my house are planning a "No Boys Allowed Shopping Spree" with the caveat that the "no boys" part doesn't apply to the boy's credit cards.

Writing project update:  The reorganization of feature #1 is on schedule.  Feature #2 is aging like claret (and probably will until I can figure out how to get the budget lower).  Feature #3 is stalled out but that's okay.  Short #1(really a promo video) is complete and available to watch on Facebook - you don't have to login.  Finally, short #2 is in outlining/synopsis/1st draft mode.  That's quite a mode.  I have the concept and logline but the rest of my process is still sort of out there.

So Jon, thanks for the updates and everything, but this is Thursday.  Where's the TV report?

This was not a good week for TV from my perspective.  I left several episodes unfinished.  I don't know

Francis Aaron a.k.a. '85' in 1992's Alien 3

 if it was the after effects of the perigee moon, just being tired from the kettlebells, or that I've picked up Nevil Shute's A Town Like Alice.  What an amazing story teller.

We started a “Glades” and stopped it 10 minutes in.  Picked it back up a couple of nights later and finished the episode but, meh.  We got about 8 minutes into “Terra Nova” and gave up.  Just wasn't cutting it, seemed like everyone was being really, really dumb.  I mean 85 dumb.  Watched “Arrested Development” and my wife fell asleep - it's only 20 minutes long.  Tried another episode a few nights later and, well, either it's not staying fresh or it was just not a good week.  We even watched a “Flashpoint” to break things up.  It was the worst episode we've seen.  There have been a couple of good ones, most are okay.  This one I kept saying, "What?"  Except for the part where I said, "Dude, you're BACK is on fire, why don't you roll around on that instead of your stomach?"  It was one of those weeks where Plants vs. Zombies is more interesting than anything else on the screen.

This week, “Must See TV” is “Must See something else on TV”.