What the hell is a meme?

I seem to have been tagged with a meme.

Show of hands, how many people here have heard of a meme? Yeah, me neither. Apparently, in the blogosphere, there exists a mutation of the age-old chain letter available only to bloggers. It is called a meme (rhymes with "dream"), and it is very similar to those email questionnaires that we loved to spend an hour and half filling out when we were bored at our computers in college. Remember when we really thought that people were interested in what our favorite smell was, or whether we prefered vanilla ice cream or Rocky Road, or our exact name as it appears on our birth certificate? But by the time you recieved your 1,342,647,293rd email questionnaire from that girl from your college lit class who ended all her sentences with "seriously...LOL!!!?!," you started to think maybe those things were not so cool.

The good news is that memes appear to come from bloggers of like minds, so they're likely to be far more intelligent and interesting than "summer or winter?" "Hugs or kisses?" "Boxers or briefs?" Also shorter, which is really key, because I tend to write lengthy topic introductions.

The other upside of blogging memes is that when you post, you link to those who came before and after you, and so blog readers gain access to good blogs they may never have previously explored. And really, who couldn't use another blog to peruse when your boss steps out of the office?

The particular meme which has found its way to me happens to be a Screenwriter's meme (started by Fun Joel). I routinely read several good blogs written by screenwriters because I am just that crazy about film and television, even though I make no claim to it. I am not in "The Biz," although my brother-in-law is a movie critic, and I like to pick his brain. My only other connection to any successful Hollywooders would have to be my friend Diane Kristine, who writes the House, M.D. reviews at blogcritics, and who recently interviewed Lawrence Kaplow, one of the House screenwriters. Diane Kristine, incidentally, is who tagged me with this meme.

So, without further ado—The Screenwriting Meme for People Who Like Writing, but Without the Screen, So Much:

What is your earliest film-related memory?

When I was seven years old, my babysitter took my sister and me to see My Stepmother is an Alien in the theater. (Don't judge me. I was seven.) The movie was PG-13 for sexuality, and I'm certain my parents had no idea. I remember feeling vaguely daring as I watched Kim Basinger strut her PG-13 self all over Dan Akroyd's house. When the time came for the inevitable PG-13 sex scene, my babysitter suddenly decided I had seen enough, and forced me to hide under the chairs for the duration of the scene. I knelt among the empty popcorn boxes and sticky seat bottoms, and listened to Kim and Dan moaning, PG-13-ishly, and thought about the best way to lock the babysitter out of the house when we got home.

Name two favorite lines from movies.

It's slightly embarassing how much this question (command?) bothered me. If you know me, you know that I am a movie quote fiend, and choosing my two favorites is rather like asking me to choose which of my children will be granted a full scholarship to Yale, and which will be fed to the Olsen twins at the rehab clinic. So, here are two of my many, many favorites, undefinitively:

• They all have husbands and wives and children and houses and dogs, and, you know, they've all made themselves a part of something and they can talk about what they do. What am I gonna say? "I killed the president of Paraguay with a fork. How've you been?" – John Cusack, Grosse Pointe Blank


• Nigel Tufnel: [on what he would do if he couldn't be a rock star] Well, I suppose I could, uh, work in a shop of some kind, or...or do, uh, freelance, uh, selling of some sort of, uh, product. You know...
  Marty DiBergi: A salesman?
  Nigel: A salesman, like maybe in a, uh, haberdasher, or maybe like a, uh, um...a chapeau shop or something. You know, like, "Would you...what size do you wear, sir?" And then you answer me.
  Marty: Uh...seven and a quarter.
  Nigel: "I think we have that." See, something like that I could do.
  Marty: Yeah...you think you'd be happy doing something like-
  Nigel: "No; we're all out. Do you wear black?" See, that sort of thing I think I could probably...muster up.
  Marty: Do you think you'd be happy doing that?
  Nigel: Well, I don't know - wh-wh-... what're the hours?
  – Christopher Guest and Rob Reiner, This is Spinal Tap

Name three jobs you'd do if you could not work in "The Biz."

We've established that I'm not in The Biz, unless you get some sort of honorary ShowBiz achievement award for beginning your fifth consecutive year as a loyal Entertainment Weekly subscriber. (And frankly, if I have to read one more "Shaw Report" by Jessica Shaw, I might qualify.) But were I to choose a life beyond the glamours of my current post as Multimedia Specialist for an insurance company, I would be:

• An Olympic equestrian.


• A sculptor who works only in Lincoln Logs and french fries.


• A writer. My first book would be a chronicle of my adventures dressing up in large food-product costumes and standing in front of restaurant establishments that didn't hire me.

Name four jobs you have actually held outside the Industry.

• "Pony Walker" at the Maryland Renaissance Festival. My job was to place small, disgruntled children on the backs of small, disgruntled ponies, and lead them around in small, disgruntled circles while the parents bought beer and learned how to throw knives. I had to wear full peasant regalia and stay "in character." By "character," they meant we had to speak with Olde English accents. Mine sounded more South Jersey than anything.


• Sales associate in the children's department of Sears. My early exposure to Big Corporate Retail may have been the beginning of what made me cynical. Eight-hour exposure to a Blue's Clues tape playing on a constant loop next to the register caused me to develop an unfortunate Pavlovian reaction. To this day, if I see any blue animals with unnaturally large heads, I fall to the ground, clutch my arms, and rock back and forth, murmuring, "We've just figured out Blue's Clues, because we're really SMART!"


• Secretary and office clerk at an Air Force base. I worked in an office, surrounded by a lot of people wearing camouflage. I thought that was funny since camouflage is really not stealthy at all when you're surrounded by white walls. I learned a lot about the inner workings of the American military system, including where to find several large men (and a few kick-ass women) to have your back when you need it.


• Sales associate, teacher, and all around managerial type at an independently owned craft store in the Midwest. Next week is my last week, thank God, because now I'm a grown-up.

Name three book authors you like.

P.G. Wodehouse. Sometimes Chuck Palahniuk. And at the risk of sounding utterly pop, J. K. Rowling.

I need to read more.

Name two movies you'd like to remake or properties you'd like to adapt.

The Last Unicorn, which was an excellent book and a haunting (if imperfect) animated film, is currently in pre-production as a live-action movie, and seems to have been stuck there for the last four years. I don't know if it will ever get made, but I wish I was heading that project. I'd also like to adapt the Calvin & Hobbes comic strip into a loosely based, satirical, live-action television show. It would be a very, very dicey project, and would require the writing skills of someone far more competent than myself, but I would like to see a fresh translation that stays true to the timeless genius of Bill Watterson.

Name one screenwriter you think is underrated.

The undiscovered ones that keep plugging away, despite rejection in a cuthroat industry. The ones that are currently fetching coffee at television studios for loud men in ugly sunglasses, bussing tables in a cafe in Hollywood, and going home to pound their heads against their computer screens in frustration. The ones that haven't written the next Lost yet. Or maybe they have, but it hasn't seen daylight because of crazy politics and beligerant studio heads. Keep on keeping on, guys.

Now I'm supposed to tag people of my own. The only blogger I know who is remotely connected to the entertainment industry is the one who sent me this, and I do not personally know most of the people who write my favorite big-time blogs. So, I'll go with two people whose thought processes I enjoy, and one big-name blogger who will probably have no idea that I even linked to her, but you should read her blog anyway:

• eyeroller


• Jay T


• Jen Lancaster