Mercury Retrograde Meltdown…

I don’t know if I really believe in the whole Mercury in Retrograde mumbo jumbo that everyone’s been talking about for the past few weeks, but I do know that I have been breaking literally everything I touch lately.

Last Friday I dropped my iPhone — which, BTW, I have dropped hundreds of times! — and broke the LCD connector inside. The screen was fine with nary a scratch or crack to speak of, but all I could see were the dreaded vertical blue lines. Urgh…such a bummer! Luckily, Siri still worked, so, I was able to have her read me my emails and text messages and I even had her call people for me. Of course, I couldn’t hang up when the call ended, but, hey, at least my phone was still kind of moderately usable.

In the meantime I weighed my options with AT&T. I am about six months away from an upgrade, so, my pickings were slim and expensive and just thinking about it made my brain hurt. In the end, Mrs. Yeti and I decided to bite the bullet and lay out the cash for a new phone…and then, something glorious happened. I found a place called uBreakiFix in Glendale, and not only did they fix my LCD thingy, but they did it in an hour and fifteen minutes for $86. To say they saved my bacon is a serious understatement. Those guys rocked!

Of course, the iPhone was only one small part of the shit I broke last week. Aside from breaking two, count ’em, two of Greta’s water bottles, I also broke my longstanding contract with my internet provider Earthlink. I know, that doesn’t technically count as breaking something, but, let me tell ya, changing all of your shit over to a new email address is a freaking nightmare. Especially when you’ve had said address since 1998!

Yep, I signed up with Earthlink during the Clinton administration! Crazy, huh? Anyway, you’d be amazed at how complicated is to reset all your accounts on all your shit across the entire internet. I had to start a handwritten list after a while to keep track of it all and even that got confusing! But, at the end of the day, I emerged a much happier Gmail user.

Oh, and if I somehow forgot to send someone out there my new email address, don’t take it personally, I tried to hit everyone in my book, but, by the end, my brain was mush. If you really need to reach me, you can always comment here or text me or something. I’m pretty easy to find…

Anyway, hopefully all of that insanity is behind me now that Mercury has left retrograde or whatever, but, man…what a week. The Fourth of July weekend in San Diego cannot come soon enough. Seriously, bring on the booze and BBQ, baby!

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Watching vs. Documenting

A friend of mine who has a son around Greta’s age gave me some really great advice recently. He said that over the years he realized that he spent so much time documenting his son’s soccer games, music recitals, etc., that he had never actually seen his son do anything. You know, in real time with his naked eyes.

So, the next time his son had an event, my friend left his iPhone and camera in his backpack and actually watched his son perform — no camera, no zoom, no video, no flash, just straight up watching — and it was magical. So, last Thursday at Greta’s annual ballet class parent viewing day I did the same thing.

As you can see, I still took a few pictures here and there, but, for the most part I simply watched my daughter dance and it was lovely. Seriously, I never knew what I was missing…Greta was amazing!

If you haven’t tried it yet for yourself, I highly recommend you do. Handing off the camera to someone else (or even just not taking pics or video) and actively watching your kid perform is pretty damn incredible. Try it!

Greta’s Bookshelf: “Press Here” by Hervé Tullet

Anyone who has ever been to our place can tell you that we have an s-load of books. There are books in the kitchen, the dining room, the bathroom, and don’t even get me started on the bedrooms. Greta actually has so many kids books in her room that we have to rotate them out.

It’s kinda crazy, but, all three of us love to read (or, in Greta’s case, pretend to read) and re-read our favorite books, so, honestly, I can’t imagine life without them. To tell you the truth, I kinda distrust people with no books in their house. I don’t care if you keep them in the closet, but, you best have some books somewhere if you wanna hang these Yetis.

Anyway, Mrs. Yeti and I started collecting kids books before we even dreamed of having an actual kid. If we found one (or twenty) that we loved, we bought them. And we rarely, if ever, get rid of them. Hell, one look at the bookshelf in Greta’s room and you’ll see that many of the books there were ours when we were kids. Sure, they moved up a few shelves when Greta started eating them as a baby, but, those vintage kids books hold a place of honor in our home and our hearts.

So, whenever we read a new kids book that moves us as much as those old classics did, well, we just have to tell the world about it. So, without further ado, I give you: “Press Here” by Hervé Tullet.

Mrs. Yeti has been selling this book in her store for a while now, but, Greta and I are new converts to the wonders of “Press Here” and let me tell you, it’s a very fun read. I don’t want to give too much away, but, this very creative book is interactive in the extreme.

It all starts with the first page’s simple command to “Press Here” and quicker than you say “Twister: The Novel” you are turning the book on its side, tilting it to the left, then to the right, shaking it really hard and even blowing on the pages at one point. If you don’t have fun reading this book to your kids, you must just hate fun. Seriously, we were cracking up, it’s a very cool read.

And aside from now having an iPhone App, this book is so cool it even has its own trailer on YouTube. Ha! Top that Frog and Toad! Just kidding, I love the Frog and Toad books. My brother and I used to fight over who got to be Frog and who got to be Toad before we started reading them. Yep, he’s a book nerd too. You should see how many books he and his wife have…crazy!

Anyway, if you have a toddler in your house (or even if you don’t!) you must check out this book today. But make room on your shelf first, because, trust me, you’re gonna wanna own this one.

The magic of Mac…

Man, I know it’s crazy and I should be working on other stuff right now, but I simply cannot stop reading about the passing of Steve Jobs. I feel like a really good friend died or something. So sad…

See, I’ve been a Mac loyalist since Mrs. Yeti and I first moved to Los Angeles in the early-90’s. I had just been accepted into the American Film Institute’s screenwriting program and I needed a new computer. We didn’t have any money, and my Dad wasn’t keen on supporting the whole grad school experience, so, I had to talk my Grandma Danaher into buying me my first Mac, or, as I put it at the time “loaning me the money to buy it”.

I think she kinda knew it was more of a gift than a loan, but, she went with it anyway. In fact, she was the only person I knew who didn’t try to talk me into buying a much-less-expensive PC. I guess my Grandma figured if her crazy, artsy grandson said he needed a Mac to help him create, well, that was good enough for her. So, she made it happen and a few days later I bought my first ever Apple Computer…a gleaming, super-sexy Quadra 605. Hot damn, that thing was sleek! Seriously, if I wasn’t already with Mrs. Yeti, I woulda left her for that computer quicker than you can say disc drive. I loved that Quadra to death — Literally. I only stopped using it when it officially died almost ten years later — and I have been a die-hard Mac geek ever since.

I wrote the first screenplay I ever sold on that Quadra and later on, several others on our even sexier 17-inch widescreen iMac G4, you remember the one with the egg-shaped thing on the bottom? That was my girl, actually, she still is…I just keep her in the garage now.

The music that inspired all that writing has been played on a series of iPods over the years and I wrote and rewrote several scenes on the set of my first produced feature film on my trusty Macbook, but the biggest thrill of all has been watching the ease with which Greta operates my iPhone. Seriously, she knows how to do everything but send text messages. And this afternoon as she slipped the phone out of my pocket to watch “Toy Story” for the three-hundredth time, I thought of two things. One was, holy shit, how fucking awesome is it that we can watch movies on phones these days?! And two is that all of this magic was brought into our lives by Mr. Steve-freaking-Jobs! I mean, even the movie came from a company of his. Amazing!

Anyway, thanks again for the many wonderful ways in which you touched my life, Mr. Jobs. The magic you created will be with us forever…

Steve Jobs (1955-2011)

I already posted a couple of pics and a very cool video of a deeply-moving commencement speech that Steve Jobs gave at Stanford in 2005 on our sister blog, so, thought I’d break it up a little and post my favorite quote from the speech here.

“Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose…you are already naked, there is no reason not to follow your heart.” – Steve Jobs

Man, just imagine all the amazing shit we could get done if we stopped caring what other people think and forged our own path through life. Steve Jobs didn’t just talk about changing things up and thinking different, he lived it. And the world, and my life for sure, is a better place because of it.

Thanks again for everything you did to make our world a much cooler and truly magical place, Mr. Jobs. You will be greatly missed…

The future is now…

OK, so, over the weekend, I totally visited the future, and you know what, it’s today. Seriously! After dinner Sunday night one of us shouted: “Hey, let’s rent ‘Rango’ tonight!” So, I call our video store — yes, we still go to an independent, non-chain video store and it’s awesome! — and ask them if they have the movie. Unfortunately, it’s already checked out. Suckage…

Normally, that’s where this story would end because I’ll only go into a Blockbuster Video if it’s on fire, and there are cute, baby animals inside in need of rescue. But tonight, I decided to try the future instead. So, I Googled “Red Box” on my iPhone, downloaded the free App, clicked here, clicked there, and in less than a minute a copy of “Rango” (on Blu-Ray no less!) was waiting for me to pick it up at my local Red Box stand. I shit you not, it was that easy. All I had to do was pick it up.

And ten minutes and $1.65 later, we were watching the movie on our TV at home. I swear to God, if that’s not the future, than I don’t know what is…insanity!