Scene from script idea

EXT - BAGHDAD - DAYTIME

We are outside of an Iraqi village/market, camera is pulled back in a wide shot above the city. It's high noon and the sun is blinding, a slow zoom begins as the camera swoops down to the ground and enters the perimeter of the village through an alley.

The street is barren, mostly quiet save for a few sounds from far away (market chatter). As the camera creeps down street you can see a 3 story building at the end (abandoned looking).

After a while (while camera is still creeping down the street) a camel spider emerges from the bottom of the screen, it is now being followed by the camera in a close-up. On the right side of the road you see a group of soldiers (out of focus) sitting on crates right outside of one of the many beat up shacks. The spider starts to approach the group, stopping every now and then for cautions sake, camera follows the spider until it is a few feet from a crate which one of the soldiers is sitting on, then stops. By the sound of it the 3 soldiers are playing cards, constant cursing and bickering etc. A card flutters off the table into view of the camera and as a soldiers hand appears to pick it up he screams and falls off the crate.

Geoff(soldier that fell):
FUCK!, fuck dude fuck kill that thing cmon(trails off muttering curses)

Rich(2nd soldier)[smiling but reaching for gun]:
oh my god

G [brushing himself off]:
no, stop dude you know i dont fuck around with fuckin insects like that

Matt (3rd soldier) [crying with laughter]:
it's not an insect dick...he's Rich's spotter

Geoff and Rich both smile and exchange some hesitant looks, Matt's laugh is incredibly contagious and he had a habit of breaking tension like this.

G [calming down a little bit]:
you better gimme that that 20 back

R [giggling]:
fuck off Geoff, not if my boys got anything to say about it [pointing to spider, cracks up again]

Geoff is smiling, but looking for a way out of the situation as if backed into a corner by the spider.

G:
Bay (nickname for Matt) cmon dude...

M [sarcastically points to himself, raises eyebrows]:
He wasn't looking at my cards

Geoff picks the crate up, musters up all is courage and starts to look for an opening to attack the spider. Starts to approach the spider but decides to just throw the crate at it, it misses and the spider scurries towards the door of the shack as the luietenant is walking out.

Luietenant [startled, steps on spider]:
Shit.

commonplaces

One enormous commonplace in my life as well as the lives of many others in America is the presence and consumption of alcohol. I consider myself a moderate drinker by the standards of today's college student, but that being said I still would say that alcohol is a necessary commonplace in my life. Being one of the only legal drugs in this country, alcohol is a prerequisite for almost every activity I'm involved in. When I go to the pool at my complex I bring beer, when I watch football I drink beer, I get it when I'm at a restaurant and I obviously drink plenty of it when I'm at a bar. Every UofA football or basketball game requires hours of drinking prior to, and any home cooked meal requires a glass or 2 or 7 of wine. Alcohol acts as the ultimate social lubricant, when is the last time any of us have been on a date without some form of alcohol being involved? So social events are primarily dictated by alcohol but I also drink at times when I'm alone, althought not heavily. When i get home from work the first thing i do is mix up a cocktail are crack a beer, for whatever reason alcohol can relax me one night and get me amped the next. So to put this in context, i think alcohol represents a release for us in this society. We work all week to earn the right to drink on the weekends, whether we need to unwind from a rough day or let loose because of a rough week it seems as though alcohol is the agent that allows us to do that. This never seemed especially significant to me until i started hanging out with a kid from Saudi Arabia over the summer. Alcohol is illegal in his country and he has never drank it before, yet he still goes out to bars and clubs on a regular basis. His culture has it's own ways of winding down or enjoying time off that don't include alcohol. When alcohol is not available at certain social events it seems to kill the entire event, imagine having people over to your apartment on a saturday night for a 'party' and having no alcohol? Nobody would stay for longer than 5 minutes because getting drunk is such a norm in this country. I wonder what life would be like if alcohol was made illegal here.

Persuasion

In my "community" people are persuaded through facts and testimony. People's minds are changed by sources who they perceive as credible or facts that seem relevant to the argument. A friend of mine who really shares my enthusiasm for hip hop music used to hate Dave Matthews. We both share the same love for hip hop but i also enjoy a wide arrangement of other music while he does not. I was trying to tell him how talented the Dave Matthews Band was but he could not get past all the stigmatisms associated with Dave fans. Even i have to admit that the reputation of being a "Dave" fan is not something i ever want myself to have. With the incredible talent that the band has, many fans seem to think themselves better than fans of other music as if noone can equal Dave's musical talent, which is ludicrous and hence the terrible reputation these fans carry with them. But i do enjoy their music and my attempts to get my friend to listen were futile. That is until i showed him a Jurassic 5 (hiphop group) song that featured dave matthews, after liking the song he instantly changed his perception of dave and started to warm up to his other songs. On a side note I think music is a very interesting way to better understand someones personality and better understand their set of beliefs.

A Trip to San Diego pt. 2

The first place we went to was a beach front coffee shop, it was still very early and we had no time to be tired. Some sleigh bells chimed over our heads as we pushed through the front door and a very cute girl greeted us and took our orders. She had a mysterious sort of beauty, she could have been 18 or 28 but none of us could tell. So armed with 4 coffees and 8 pairs of legs we marched out of the shop and towards the beach. It was the massive piers that first captivated our attention, all of us are from the east coast where ocean piers do not exist. But here in San Diego these piers stretched out into the ocean for hundreds of yards. This particular pier had two rows of identical small houses which lined either side, most of them having cars and SUVs parked out in front of them. What an odd feeling it was, it was as if this normal suburban street had been lifted up from the earth and dropped on a creeking, rotting boardwalk 30 feet above the ocean. We walked out onto the pier as though there was a river of lava below us and the pier was just a rope bridge. After being convinced that it wouldn't collapse beneath our feet we started enjoying the overcast morning once again. I walked with my head down, watching the greenish waves thrash about in between the cracks of the boardwalk. When we reached the end we all leaned over the railing and just soaked in the moment. As the wind tossed my hair here and there I watched hundreds of surfers waiting for a nice whitecap, which were plentiful that morning. Noone spoke for a good five minutes, until the caffeine kicked in. We were restless and starving, time to get going.
A half hour later we were sitting outside of a bar and grill waiting for 'breakfast'. The sun had made it's way out from behind the clouds and finally order was restored to San Diego, after all they only get one cloudy day every 1,000 years. It was shining down on our table with a vengeance, furious that clouds had deprived it of it's usual morning routine. As hot as it was all i could think about was the mound of waffle fries that was headed my way...and the bloody mary. Finally the waitress rounded the corner with our food and I had a little party in my stomach. The waffle fries didn't last more than five minutes the bloody mary a little longer, damn it was spicy.

Apartment Woes

Due to the incredible incompetence of the NorthPointe management and staff I had to write and submit this letter to the corporate office today:

Apartment 1714 has a number of significant deficiencies that require your immediate attention. Most of the deficiencies were reported to you and your maintenance crew weeks ago with little or no responding services. Here is a detailed list of the deficiencies:

1- Recently, our air conditioning unit has not been working. A member of your maintenance staff informed us that the unit is freezing up (we assume he meant the coils within the unit) and suggested we let it thaw for about 3 hours before trying the a/c again. This worked only temporarily and the heat in our apartment is causing sleep problems resulting in tiredness, fatigue and tardiness at work and school. We also noticed that there is weak airflow in general (which is most likely causing the coils to freeze). When the a/c is running, it also makes a very loud, constant disruptive noise.

2- Our dryer works but when in use, it also makes an incredibly loud constant noise.

3- The icemaker in our refrigerator is non operational, and we’ve submitted several complaints about this (one of which is high priority) with no response. Also, the light in the refrigerator does not turn on.

4- There is unfinished work in a number of areas throughout the apartment. Your crew advised that they would be back to complete the work in a couple days. They have not returned. The unfinished work includes installation of moldings (Some were installed but don’t match the original moldings and are not painted), doors which have been taken off the hinges by the maintenance crew and not put back on, unfinished work around the sprinkler in the hallway and blue markers which are still up on the walls.

5- The ceiling fan in room A is non operational and the carpets are largely stained from previous tenants.

It is your responsibility to resolve these deficiencies immediately. If not, we will be forced to either fix them ourselves (and deduct the repair costs from our rent) or simply take a deduction from our monthly rent since we are clearly not getting what we paid for. We feel that these problems are easy fixes and it should not take a full month to get a response.

If we do not hear from you within seven (7) days, we'll need to take action. You can call or email any of us. Thanks for your time.

Opening Day

Awoken at 9 A.M. by a screaming alarm sound this past Sunday I jolted out of bed, snatched up my phone and nearly hurled it against my bedroom wall. I was in a miserable mood for about 3 seconds until i realized that yes, my New York Jets were kicking off in an hour. As if shot from a slingshot my mood whipped from rage to elation in the blink of an eye. After typing 'Jay-Z' into the search window of my iTunes, I selected "The Blueprint 3" album and put on "Empire State of Mind ft. Alicia Keys", off with the boxers and into the shower I went. I washed up furiously as i listened to the bass rattle my shower curtain rings and Alicia belt out a chorus praising the "inspiring lights" of New York. I was bobbing my head so much I nearly fell out of the shower trying to apply some shampoo. By the time the song was fading out i had my shorts on and was pulling my green and white Darrel Revis jersey over my head, next stop the Catalina Mart.

When i walked out of my ground floor apartment the sun nearly blinded me, one kid was shooting hoops and a few early birds were already at the pool but all i was thinking about was which 12 pack i was going to buy, Budweiser or Blue Moon? This was a day of celebration so i went with the latter. I walked back to the apartment kicking rocks and day-dreaming about QB Mark Sanchez NFL debut, I knew it would be a successful one. My apartment door was open when I got back and my roomate (a Pittsburg Steeler fan) was watching the pregame show. My blue moon fizzled as I dropped an orange slice into it and i sat on the coach, overflowing with excitement.

Throughout the game i was constantly on my feet, yelling, chanting, running around outside, spilling Blue Moon everywhere and taunting any Jets naysayers who happened to be in my general vicinity. Being a Jet fan is not an easy task, they manage to break their fans hearts nearly every season so when they do something positive, I'm ecstatic about it. When the game ended I was collapsed on my couch, nearly as tired as the players probably were. The Jets had thoroughly destroyed the Houston Texans and I didn't stop grinning until i fell asleep that night.

TSUNAMI

This essay is not so much about a defining moment but rather about a recurring dream that I have had for years. From 10th-12^th grade I attended Connetquot High School in Long Island NY and I have always thought that I lucked out with my graduating class. Contrary to the classes directly above and below me, my class was very close knit and we would routinely hang out in large groups. The dream is very odd in that it involves every person in my graduating class, and the amount of time each person spends in my dream seems to be directly related to the strength of the relationship I had with them back in HS. The dream has remained fairly consistent but my interpretation of it has changed over the years.

It starts with me and a few of my close friends on a completely barren beach, come to think of it it’s really just a large sandbar out in the middle of the ocean. The bright white sand bar is about a half mile long and 200 yards wide and completely devoid of any vegetation, just 2 or 3 straw huts collected toward it’s center. Around this little oasis is nothing but calm, aqua blue, ocean as far as the eye can see in every direction. The sky is always perfectly clear and it always takes place during sunset, when the sun is a deep blood orange and as close to the horizon as possible while still remaining a perfect visible circle.

My girlfriend and I, along with a few of our very close friends, are all lying on our backs propped up on our elbows just making small talk and horsing around. The tide nearly touches our feet as the small rolling waves stretch to reach as far up the beach as they can, then get pulled back into the blue abyss as if attached to rubber bands. Just under the setting sun there is an enormous swell of water that stretches out across the horizon, we all know it’s a tsunami but nobody seems to care as we don’t even mention it to one another. As the wave creeps closer we continue to joke with one another and I feel as happy as any dream has ever made me feel.

After what seems like about a half hour I stand up and leave my group of friends to go walk around the island as I need to say my goodbye’s to the rest of my class before the wave reaches us. Some of them in the straw huts and others strolling about the shoreline, but I find them all in the same groups that were established in my real life high school. It feels great to catch up with everyone as we all joke around and talk about life after high school. Eventually I notice that the wave is twice as close as it was before and I make my way back to my girlfriend and company. Once I lay back down in the sand next to the people who are closest to me we all just watch the wave grow larger and larger, and strangely enough I still feel absolutely incredible, I’m on cloud nine. As the wave closes in it gets larger and larger until it is about a hundred feet away and maybe 300 feet high, totally blocking out the sun. As the shadow falls on us we all exchange glances that seem to say “OK, see you on the other side”. And it’s at this moment that I get a very odd feeling which seems to be blissful excitement about reaching “the other side” (whatever that may be), and despite repeating the dream several times I am totally unable to pinpoint what is so exciting about being swallowed by this enormous wave.

When I first had the dream it was obvious to me what it meant, I was finally graduating secondary school and the future was uncertain, yada-yada. But now that I have had the dream several times 4 years after graduation I think it takes on a new meaning. The dream seems to be a therapy for me during very stressful times. The sense of relaxation and happiness I feel during the dream always resonates pretty significantly for the rest of that week, I feel calmer and am able to handle whatever workload I have a little more efficiently. But most importantly is the comforting feeling I get that “everything is going to be OK”. Whether ‘everything’ is referring to the specific problem I am feeling at the time or life itself is a mystery to me, but as I grow older it seems more and more like the latter.

snowboarding scare

As i carved down the face of Mt. Summit wrapped in insulated Colombia outerwear from head to toe, I sweating profusely even though i was dodging icicles hanging from the branches of pine trees buried in two feet of snow. Through snow-camo Oakley goggles all the pines looked brown while the snow was a sick tint of tangerine. My neckwarmer was pulled all the way up to cover my mouth and nose, but the two small gaps just under my goggles and above the warmer were being blasted by the rush of ice-cold air, the sting was unbearable. Freezing tears were being blasted from the corners of my eyes towards my ears as i braced for a small jump which looked like it was going to get me out of the forest of glades i had found my way into. Needle covered branches were smacking my in the face as the entire world around me was an orange blur, the next moment i was weightless.

I opened my eyes and realized i was horizontal in the air, flying directly across the small opening i had been shooting for. I was headed for another crowd of pine trees with no helmet and no control over my body. Once i crossed the plane of trees i reached out and grasped just enough of a branch to slow myself down and tear a huge hole in my glove and a smaller one in my palm. I managed not to hit any of the looming pines, and the next thing i knew i was staring up into the canopy watching snowflakes drift down onto my goggle lenses in slow motion. The powdered snow contoured perfectly to my body as i laid there recovering my senses, I was unbelievably comfortable.

When I finally got my snowboard unstrapped i sat up and saw a deer about 30 yards deeper into the woods. It stared at me with wide open black eyes as if it was just as surprised as i was that my head hadn't been caved in, when i stood up it ran away and i kept on boarding, still 1 or 2MPH away from catastrophe.

A Trip to San Diego

Our terribly overpriced rent-a-car rolled at a snail's pace, passed the line of towering palm trees on the Pacific Beach strip. Fatigued from a 6 hour drive, I let my arm hang out the passenger side window while the soft, salty ocean breeze rolled up under my T-Shirt sleeve and across my face. In between each sunglass hut, t-shirt booth, and taco stand i could see the endless expanse of a navy blue/gray Pacific Ocean doing its best impression of the perfectly overcast sky. A few renegade clumps of hair flickered across my eyes as i watched a middle aged woman with a parrot on her shoulder float past on a pair of 70's roller derby skates. We passed a line of at least fifty people waiting outside of a local breakfast joint, a throng of college students celebrating the holiday especially early and The Giant Dipper, Sand Diego's famed beach-front rollercoaster known to be especially unpleasant to ride, as if that would stop anybody from being able to say they have ridden a rollercoaster on a beach.
The gravel crunched under our freshly armor-all'd tires as we pulled into the parking lot directly adjacent to The Giant Dipper. Far too excited to be tired, we stepped out of the Pontiac G6 armed with towels, a slightly molded Igloo cooler and a Ladder-Ball set. As seagulls swarmed above and families set up their Memorial Day tents and grills, the four of us looked around at each other...mission accomplished...it was 7:00 AM and by some act of God we had actually made it from Tucson to the Pacific Ocean for Memorial Day.
At 11:00 PM the night before I was washing dishes miserably at the RumRunner, a local Tucson wine store/restaurant. My hands pale white and raisin-like from the dirty dish water I found myself mopping up the remnants of a half-eaten Halibut and mango salsa dish that had somehow gotten out of the dirty dish tub and onto the floor. My friend Jay was visiting from New York with high hopes of seeing California. But due to the lack of a valid credit card we were unable to rent a car, so he was stuck in my apartment alone while i was just finishing up mopping duties, looking forward to scrubbing out a cooking pot caked with black char from a pea soup that was left on the stove for nearly 5 hours.
"Ey mate we're looking to get out of here by midnight so lets work a little faster ya?"
"Doin' my best Martin."
"Right, i forgot you're from New York, take your time mate i know your doing the best you can."
"Fuck off."
"Cheers."
Martin is the Australian born Head Chef at my restaurant, he's my boss and he's a smartass. Thank God he's a down-to-earth guy and we have a good relationship, less this job get anymore miserable because of an overbearing chef breathing down my neck. So i scrubbed the pot, re-mopped the kitchen floor and took the garbage out all the while exchanging clever little quips with Martin about our respective places of origin. Then while i was taking off the plastic apron that is supposed to keep me dry, my phone vibrated in my soaking wet jeans, it was Jay along with my cousin Dave and they sounded way too excited.
"Murph, get your ass out of work and back this apartment pronto."
I couldn't quite suppress a laugh at his sarcastic Long Island Mafia accent, come to think of it he's almost as much of a smartass as Martin.
"Don't take that tone with me you prick... what's the deal."
"Kyle this is your cousin, 3-way call going on right now homie, i just found an unactivated Credit Card in my wallet. The hotels room is booked and the car is rented, its go time."
And so it began...

TO BE CONTINUED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!@!@!

Finals Week

Ron is a security guard at the University of Arizona. He's giving his legs a little breather outside the Main Library, it's finals week and he's closing in on his paid vacation time. People are coming and going, no big deal, nothing suspicious. Then a kid in a Mets jersey catches his eye. He feels like he has seen this kid before, perhaps even earlier today, but the kid looks like your average college stdent so he's nobody especially suspicous. he watches the Mets jersey turn around the corner of the building anyway. Two minues later, here we go again, same Mets jersey walking in the same direction, but now the kid has a coffee in his hand. Once again ron watches him turn the same corner and vanish behind the massic building. Five minutes after that Ron is startled to see the same kid doing another lap around the library, chugging coffee and taking things from his pocket and popping them into hi smouth. But now instead of walking the kid is kind of moseying, talking to himself and looking into the greenish library windows. Ron starts doubting whether it was only coffee in the cup, and starts wondering whether it was candy or narcotics the kid keeps tossing into his mouth. All of the sudden the kid changes direction and storms into the library. Ron calls for backup and starts running towards the main doors, one hand on his taser, the other holding up his pants...finally some action.