The Hollywood Gaming Association

I hate gambling.

Maybe "hate" isn't the correct word. Let's try something more along the lines of this:

"Boring."

Yeah, that's better -- it's such a standard, uninspired word to describe something that promises MONEY! SEX! BRIGHT LIGHTS! ADVENTURE! FAST TIMES! THE HIGH LIFE! and so on.

Promoting myself is a lot like gambling, it's two quasi related activities in which the gamer (or writer) hopes to advance in life, wealth, happiness, by means of making this small investment in the glowing machine with ringing bells and lights.

There are casinos all over this country, and I would go visit them, but not to play their games. I've visited one casino across the border in Oklahoma, and smaller ones in Colorado. I dropped five dollars in a machine just past the state line, pressed a button or two, and was immediately bored by the prospect of it all. I simply have no real affection for gambling.

Arguably, I saw past the neon induced haze of glamour and riches and quickly decided that the best way to get money was by having a job.

I make similar, uninteresting investments in the gaming machines of Hollywood -- a small investment comes by means of dropping money into envelopes, postage stamps, and other such means of this life I have.

I then take all that the money has bought me, place it in the machine of an Out Of Town box stationed at the edge of the local post office, and pull the lever. After ten years of playing this game, I'm bored.

To be honest, it wouldn't surprise me if those on the receiving ends of our letters are also bored, as it's arguably a two way gamble -- Hollywood is place of glamour I'm not enchanted by and I, most likely, am just another strobe light and disco ball act these harried agents are likely walking by because they are unable (or unwilling) to make possibly unwise bets on.

I can't speak for those men and women, but I can speak for myself: this game is soulless. Sure some win, more of us lose, and it really doesn't matter how you play the game. I find I have more fun writing my actual scripts than I do in placing the bets.

In other words, I'm walking through the casino, and sure the lights are fun to look at, but they're really just blurred streaks of the visible spectrum as I make my way to the word processor.

In casinos, it doesn't matter how you play the game, because you can still lose. In writing, you can win or lose, and how you play that game is a determining factor.

In the Hollywood Gaming Association, it again doesn't matter how well you play, because winning and losing comes down to just pulling the lever and seeing what happens.

It's a shame the HGA isn't more like a video game, as then it'd be more interesting. A person could make mistakes AND learn from them, then alter how they play the game, while continuing to improve their game with every press of the button.

Casino based gambling isn't anything special to me. Hollywood gambling also fails to hold my interest.

A person can learn more from the games that offer both success and failure than the ones that advertise success with the odds stacked against them. And that is what maintains a person's interest and challenges them to improve their tactics. Gambling just to get ahead is a certain way of falling further and further behind, and I've no interest in that.

But there is one thing these types of gambling can teach you, if you pay close enough attention to the lesson: "winning isn't everything, and walking away from the table doesn't mean you're a loser."

Now, if you'll excuse me, I've got literary games to play. And when those games end, there's always "The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess."

--Updated--

Some reading this might feel I'm just "mad at the system," or otherwise angry\jaded. Some years ago, that would've been true.

Now these thoughts laid out upon your computer screen are carefully thought out to actually examine what it is like.

The above comparisons to gambling establishments are not incorrect. But there is one matter that casinos have that Hollywood doesn't -- the notion of the smaller wins leading to what some would hope to be even larger jackpots.

Casinos are there to serve as bait for your paychecks. You can put a little in and would actually receive a small amount back. This is designed to keep you interested, to keep you from becoming bored, so they can, in fact, keep you fishing in an increasingly emptying lake devoid of fish or treasure.

Hollywood can't manage that. It is just like filling a slot machine repeatedly in hopes of the bigger jackpots, when the smaller ones aren't there to entice you further.

This is simply how it works, and how it has been for as long as I've been making the attempts. I remain uninterested in the "payoffs," yet I keep stuffing the machine. There are times when one's mood will mirror that of the Jimmy Buffett tune "Defying Gravity," as in "I never dream I will win, and if it all ends tomorrow, then that's fine too."

If it all ends tomorrow...then I will simply turn away from the machine and be free of it. It isn't an addiction or a lesson in self mutilation, it's an (arguably) necessary evil.

But, luckily for me, every so often Life likes to smile down on me and grant me relief and respite from the ongoing madness, usually in the form of some perfect night's sleep and Technicolor dream sequences involving blooming Easter flowers and incomparably beautiful sunrises that George Lucas has tried to recreate on his many computers, and still finds himself unable to do so.

Its moments like this that keep me going -- not the need for fame, money, or such. It's the promise of happiness in a life (hopefully) well lived as we chart our courses across the cosmos or across state lines.

You can keep feeding the machines if you've got Dory next to you, because though her advice is necessary (not to mention potentially annoying) , its her smile and attitude that keeps you going.

That, Technicolor dreams, and Jimmy Buffett.

It's all good.

Ten Years And Counting (and) Curing "Summertime Blues"

You know, I looked up the other day and realized ten years had gone by since the first time I uttered those immortal words: "I want to be a screenwriter."

I find the Ten Years Anniversary keeps popping up. Cosmic coincidence? Who knows.

Other ten years coming to fruition: a decade since a friend and I went to see "Phantom Menace," since I met yet another friend, a third friend is temporarily closing the book on our friendship as she needs to "get away" (which I completely understand), and it's also been a decade since I first purchased "Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time" and my Nintendo 64.

Oddly enough, I beat LOZ:OT this past weekend.

Now that's how you celebrate a ten year anniversary: by succeeding in something you've never really mastered in these last nine years.

(NOTE: I had to put my gaming fun aside for a few years, plus that damned Water Temple kept kicking my ass. Only last year was it when I started making progress in it again. Now I need myself a copy of "Majora's Mask," and a Wii and "Twilight Princess.")

As for "Summertime Blues," well Eddie Cochran stated you can't necessarily cure the blues themselves, but I'm making my final adjustments to the script which I started, oddly enough, nine years ago. The original draft was written in 2000 and, hopefully, it'll debut next year in order to celebrate it's tenth year anniversary.

I'm now on Facebook, yet I'm not too certain of why - I've already got too many ways of being connected as it is.

Old World Stories And Beliefs

I live in a very rural area, yet I'm not one of these people.

Outsiders (and some insiders) look at this state as the land that time forgot.

Well, it is to be perfectly honest.

But I see it differently: I have sloping hills, long green pastures, ponds, creeks, dense forests, plus I'm arguably in the foothills to the Ozarks.

If anything, I'm not in a land of backwards people: I'm in Middle-Earth. But I'm fortunate enough to have most of the various landscapes all wrapped up in a roughly fifty mile radius (or less) region that encircles me.

I have plains to the west, valleys to the south, high mountains to the north, and this particular area has rising and falling hillsides that are pretty much everywhere, as are the untouched woodlands.

There are, as Bilbo describes to Gandalf, forests, fields, little rivers.

I might as well be Frodo, living at peace in the Shire, hearing of tales of the outer lands but being quite content to stay here as well.

I'm also the only one here who would proclaim I have no need of the six (6!!!) churches in my very tiny community. If anything, I'm closer to being a follower of paganism.

And its in paganism I find my next major project will take place (although it won't happen for a few years.)

I say to myself that one day I will buy a house in Ireland, lock myself away there for a year in an attempt to absorb the culture, the language, and the old world beliefs of the people, and begin writing a collection of old fashioned fairy tales.

Then there's the gaming geek in me that is gathering unused sources around me that would make for an epic video game story. Such sources include Caitlin and John Matthew's "Encyclopedia of Celtic Wisdom - A Celtic Shaman's Sourcebook," and Pierre Dubois "Great Encyclopedia of Faeries - Secrets Revealed."

But that's just two sources. I will need more.

I say this is for an epic video game for a reason - I could take all this material and make it into another movie series (as I'm doing with the six part "Interesting Times" series I'm working on), but in the last year I started returning to my gaming roots.

My dad bought me a refurbished, first generation Nintendo for my birthday, and I was able to play all my old favorite games once again that I'd been without for a good fifteen years.

I never threw away my games or such. I kept them, mostly for sentimental reasons.

But then I could play "Mega Man" again! I was finally able to beat "Zelda II - The Adventure of Link" for the first time in my life. The same goes for "StarTropics," and several others.

When this happened, I started looking around for Super Nintendo and Nintendo 64 games, and have managed to expand my gaming library considerably.

But I lost touch with the gaming world when the GameCube came out, and even more so when the Wii arrived. I'd love nothing more than to play both, and I've even bought a few strategy guides for "Zelda - Twilight Princess" and "Metroid - Prime Corruption" because, you never know, I just might be able to buy them one day.

So the Celtic mythology and such I'm researching will hopefully, one day, be used for a massive gaming project.

I'm going to end this particular entry with a song I'm quite fond of that usually comes on the New Age music channel, Spa, on XM\Sirius Radio.

All Souls Night
by Loreena McKennitt

Bonfires dot the rolling hillsides
Figures dance around and around
To drums that pulse out echoes of darkness
Moving to the pagan sound.

Somewhere in a hidden memory
Images float before my eyes
Of fragrant nights of straw and of bonfires
Dancing 'til the next sunrise.

I can see the lights in the distance
Trembling in the dark cloak of night
Candles and lanterns are dancing, dancing
A waltz on All Souls Night.

Figures of cornstalks bend in the shadows
Held up tall as the flames leap high
The Green Knight holds the holly bush
To mark where the Old Year passes by.

Bonfires dot the rolling hillsides
Figures dance around and around
To drums that pulse out echoes of darkness
Moving to the pagan sound.

Standing on the bridge that crosses
The river that goes out to the sea
The wind is full of a thousand voices
They pass by the bridge and me.