“Yo, peep this.  The story I’m gonna tell you is wild. Some of it’s real serious and some of it’s real funny but it’s all the truth. So go ahead and laugh and go ahead and cry but listen up.”

It’s been a cold, snowy weekend here in Mass and to break between the monotony of shoveling snow, organizing production notes, and composing e-mails, I figured I would do a little writing.  The creative juices aren’t quite flowing properly in a focused enough direction to where I feel I can add anything of substance to any of the specific scripts I am currently working on so I’ve decided to put together a little blog touching on various topics and what not.

I have a few reasons for wanting to do this. The most obvious being that I like to write. It’s a very therapeutic practice for me personally and I think more people should do it. I’ve been working on a project that holds a fair amount of personal significance to me for most of the last year and before I start putting the final touches on said project, I would like to take the very short amount of time I’ve been afforded to stop and reflect on some things. This could allow me at some point in the near future to come back and maybe get a glimpse at what my mind state was at the time or maybe even help guide me in getting the ball rolling on some other things.  I have a lot stored up right now and throwing some of it out there, even in a somewhat chaotic and unfocussed manner, might help get the ball rolling. It is my hope that this will all lead to me coming up with a formula for some interesting new creative outputs but if nothing else, it will give me an outlet to reflect, share some of my opinions, and even offer up some personal things for public consumption. After all, ain’t that what most people on the Facebook are up to these days anyways? Given the loose format and my struggles with ADHD, I apologize now for what will likely look like a mixture of a serial killer’s notepad and a thirteen-year-old boy’s journal, bathed in excessive self-indulgence. Hey, nobody is forcing you to read this.

I am NOT a morning person. Some days, it takes me about two or three hours after I wake up just to get in the right temperament to where I don’t want to cause bodily harm to people who come into my comfort zone with their bullshit. There is no moodier bitch on this planet than me at the breakfast table. I like to think of myself as a fairly easy-going guy, most of the time, but it is real easy to set me off before noon.

 
I’m beginning to come around on the idea of children.  Took me years before I knew what to make of them.  Always crying.  Spilling their drinks.  Taking naps at odd times of day. Going the bathroom wherever the hell they feel like it.  It’s like half the people I go on canoe trips with. Maybe it’s that I have a niece now and a lot of my friends are starting to have children.  It’s more than likely that I have an infantile sense of humor and that anyone over the age of about seven or eight can see right through it. The younger demographic gets it though. I have this penchant for making goofy faces at random times and those little guys eat that shit up.  By comparison, the teenage girls I do it to at the mall just think it’s creepy. I’m still probably too neurotic and irresponsible to have kids of my own but when it comes time to hang them upside down and give them Japanese power bombs on the sofa or make silly cartoon character voices, it’s my time to shine.
 
Probably the coolest thing I ever got out of writing something was having people that read it tell me how much they related to the material. With writing, you’re dedicating a whole lot of time to sitting in a room by yourself in front of a keyboard or note pad and there really isn’t any guarantee that anything you write is actually going to get read.  You put a lot of time into it and put a lot of yourself out there for that small chance that it might resonate with someone.  When it does, there are few greater feelings.  It’s also somewhat comforting to know that no matter how odd or out there you may go, there’s equally odd people out there that get it.
 
I’m pretty sure I am a hypochondriac but a very lazy one. I’m often legitimately convinced that I have any number of diseases but I am too busy/broke to regularly visit the doctor’s office.
 
Before all is said and done, I think I’d like to try and do a musical.  Not the traditional operatic kind or even a parody of the style. Which is not to say that I wouldn’t incorporate certain stylistic devices from either but I’d like to see what I could come up with within the perimeters of that genre. I’ll probably start writing it around 2027.

I think I’m the only person I know who really isn’t scared of going to the dentist. As long as they aren’t drilling cavities. That shit is for the birds. The novocaine never kicks in during the actual drilling. It’s always like an hour after I leave where my entire mouth goes completely numb and I turn into a drooling mental patient. Even if it kicks in during the procedure, there’s still that whole issue of having a loud-ass surgical instrument inside your face. Never had a root canal but I’m told it’s one of the most miserable things any human will ever experience so can’t wait for that one. The only thing that bugged me at my last trip to the old tooth doctor was the X-rays. They have this X-ray machine in the hall ways that was clearly built for an eleven-year-old and they want me to contort my body like I’m getting ready to blow the world’s tallest invisible NBA player but don’t want to get my knees dirty. This is all in plain view of the entire staff and any patients that happen to be roaming the halls at that time. The actual cleaning?  Not that bad.  I know most people can’t stand that whole deal where they scrape the plaque off the old pearly whites but I don’t mind it much. The only really painful part is having to pay the bill when you don’t have dental insure. * CUE DRUM ROLL *
 
I’ve come up with a fool proof plan for combating anxiety. I am probably going to die a very horrible death live a very wonderful life. See? Worked like a charm.
 
I read a lot of books but outside of Stephen King and the occasional Elmore Leonard crime novel, I don’t much get into fiction. I usually skim through books and start reading the most interesting chapters first. I think the way fiction is written doesn’t lend itself much room for this admittedly unorthodox reading style that I’ve adopted.
 
I once “accidentally” took part in a reverse prank call. This is, of course, being when someone calls you that you don’t want to talk to do so you have a little fun with them. The incident in question involved me being awoken from an afternoon nap by a college loan collector looking for my sister. I didn’t intend to fuck with them at the time but I was tired and the only excuse I could come up with what was to tell them that they had the wrong number. The tone of the woman on the other end suggested rather strongly that she was on to me but I had already committed to this half-assed and poorly-researched lie so I was going to ride it until the wheels fell off. After about a good thirty-second back and forth, I heard a deep sigh followed by a faux polite request that I please just leave a message for my sister informing her of this call. I can’t recall my verbatim response but it was something along the lines of, “I would really like to help you, lady, but nobody by that name, lives here”.
 
The list of movies I like more than any rational human being probably should include Predator 2, Truck Turner, Orca the Killer Whale, Monument Ave, Godzilla 1985, Who’s The Man?, Runaway (with Tom Selleck and an evil Gene Simmons), Carnosaur, Kickboxer 2: The Road Back, Money Train, Kingdom of the Spiders, the 1970’s remake of King Kong, Original Gangstas, Piranha II: The Spawning, Belly, and all three entries in the “No Retreat, No Surrender” trilogy.  I also like anything where giant non-computer-generated monsters ravage through cardboard cities. This list is subject to change.

Top 5 Hilarious “Simpsons” Moments That Immediately Come To Mind.

 

1)    Mr. Burns crippling an Irish worker with a bumper car and laughing about it for weeks.

2)    Homer going to see a movie called “Hail To The Chimp” featuring a scene where a monkey president starts pummeling his secretary in the face. 

3)    Smitten over the newly-hired Marge, Mr. Burns declares over the loud speaker to his employees that “Anyone who has found true love may go home early”.  This leads to everybody excitedly celebrating and marching off, except for one guy, who stays behind, crying a single tear.

4)    Nelson laughing at the tall, nerdy guy who can’t afford a comfortable automobile.

5)    NASA watching an episode of “Home Improvement” where Tim Taylor accidentally reverse drives over Wilson and kills him.

And just for a shit and giggles… a funny “Married… with Children” moment involving Al Bundy holding his kids’ place in line so they can buy concert tickets.

 

“Hey, old dude.  They sellin’ Wayne Newton tickets too?”

“At least, Wayne never had to pee on his audience to gain their respect.  (pause.) Or maybe he did.  I don’t know. I can’t explain his popularity.”

 

During my brief tenure working at the local Wal-Mart in high school, I got light-headed one day, and went crashing to the floor of the electronics department.  As I was being wheeled into the ambulance out front, one of the EMT’s asked me, “What happened?  Get hit by all those falling prices?”.  I was too young/incapacitated, at the time, to fully appreciate his brilliantly-timed comedic observation but if I have the necessary resources today, I would track that man down and buy him a beer.

I was always a pretty big professional wrestling fan but I feel it lost its essence, once it started trying to appeal to the everyman. I miss when it was about finding the most bat-shit crazy human beings on the planet and putting them on TV. I’m talking borderline psychopaths who were so over-the-top and out of their minds that they had to bill them as being from “Parts Unknown” because there wasn’t a city in America that wanted to claim them.  The good old days when going front row to a show might mean Rick Rude would try to turn out your mom or girlfriend. When there was no amount of money worth taking to trade places with the guy that Randy “Macho Man” Savage was promising to take apart in the steel cage at the Spectrum on Saturday night. Now, it’s all glorified former high school jocks or night club bouncers doing bad high school play impersonations of the wrestling promos they watched as kids.  It’s all catchphrases and no psychology. 

 
In having a chance to work on a film, I now have a much better understanding of why guys like Joe Dante and Tim Burton have their own little stables of “stock players” that they cast over and over again in their movies.  Or why some directors hire their wives to be their leading ladies. Sometimes, it’s a difficult task to effectively communicate what you want when the clock is ticking so it’s good to use people that you have some kind of history with so you can point to certain past instances as a “frame of reference”. Also, it can get crazy on these things and it’s nice to have people around who are both easy to work with and understand their day-to-day responsibilities.

I would make a shitty teacher on just about any subject.  Even the things I consider myself decent at doing, I learned by finding out all the wrong ways to do them. I’d make a much better cautionary tale. I’d be ideal for the “Don’t Do What That Guy Just Did” picture. It sounds wrong and self-deprecating but I’d say if anything, I’ve perfected a style that works for me and probably wouldn’t for anybody else.

And, finally… another reason why I love Pizza Hut.  “Making it great”, indeed.

Jim Heffernan is a tired, tired man. He hopes to one day, reside on a tropical island with his beautiful wife, Scarlett Johansson-Heffernan and their three kids, Charlie, Rodan, and Megatron Heffernan.