What's Up...

April and I took Langston to UCLA so that he could learn how to roller skate. Yeah, I know he's eight and normally this would have happened years before, but when you're mostly an urban family living on a street where people like to drive 70 mph in a 35 mph zone, well, you don't tend to take the kid out to skate out there. Plus, for two years I've been doing nothing but writing and then fitting in everyone else in the few down times, so as I rolling into my final four weeks, I'm now getting back to normal. Or what passes for normal for me. Anyway, skating was fun. I got to test out my new inlines, and no one broke any bones. After that was a trip to Farmers Market where Langston and I scarfed down a Po Boy, and April rolled a Johnny Rockets hamburger.

Speaking of food, still loving this diet, but it's time for me to get on the exercise bike. Lost six pounds, and cheated once with some Popeyes fried chicken (and it wasn't good), and so I'm back on the caloric count. As we rolled through the Farmers Market, I felt nice and light, but the storefront reflection still said, get my ass to the gym.

Oh, and last week at Langston's martial arts school, they sparred. Sparring is always the best and watching these kids fight is not only fun, but instructive. For the most part, they don't get hurt, but some really have issues at home that manifests itself in sparring. At the last class, one eight or nine year old decided to roll his eyes at his grandmother, and was taken to task. He found himself on the mat with a kid who was good, but eye rolling kid seemed to be paralyzed by a sense that being wrong wouldn't allow him to fight back. And so he cried while the other kid pounded him. It was really a powerful demonstration about how karma can hold you back when you do wrong. And also, for this kid, it also demonstrated to him that the world doesn't stop pounding you just because you start crying. So you either have to man up or take the ass whipping. Personally, I vote for manning up.

As for writing, I've got a bunch of it. Divine Nine, a paper for my critical studies course, observations, three advisory briefs for work, and more work on the first act of THE BESTSELLERS. Ah, stuff to do.

Lastly, TheYack.com has really started to pick up. Two of my boys, David Whelan and Phil Guidry, are working with me now, so they'll be able to take over some of the things I do for the website. We're going to start doing some Saturday and Sunday programming. After that, we'll expand out.

Meeting with the USC producing student to see what happened with the pilot script I wrote over the past six months.