SO MANY PEOPLE come and go in one’s life!

Because I’ve worked on so many projects where I’ve been intensely involved with someone for a short stretch it makes sense to add them to my phone.  These include everyone from lighting designers to temp labor on design projects.  For days, even weeks, I need their info at my finger tips but then two, three, even seven years later, I just stare at their name and wonder “who the hell is that?”

It’s especially interesting with people you “had a moment” with –– and I don’t even mean romantically per se, but rather were somehow involved with your life intensely and have seemingly evaporated.

Interestingly, with Facebook and Linked In, it’s become super-easy to look up people, although truthfully from an area code I could usually piece it all together.

My one organization vow is to ALWAYS note immediately why I’m entering someone –– which will become silly once they are a best friend –– but otherwise will database life so much easier.

[Why am I doing this editing and revising? ..  Creating a major networking call list for a few projects.]

Today was a non-jump rope day, so I substitute inversions in the morning.  Basically, in one form or another, I was upside down for about 20 minutes.

Fantastic biz meeting with Susan and Val and Belle.

Tea with my branding hero, Ray Davi, and the off to Bikram (oddly the class was larger than usual but my ENEMY was not present).

And now, having reach Z on my mailing list … I really need to swing by Don Pistos and read through some treatments over a glass or two of red wine.

[By the way, the world jump roping record is 27 hours –– which is clearly quite insane.]

The plot has thickened at Bikram in that I now know my enemy’s name [see past blog entries if you're wondering why I have a nemesis in a yoga class, exactly three days after enrolling –– I realize most people simply don't attract this.]

It was, quite frankly, impossible not to learn her name since the class has about five people in it and I am always the second to arrive and she is the first, and therefore when we sign in, it’s pretty obvious.  I refuse to budge from my space, however, since I like both the breeze that comes in from the door and the psychological safety of knowing I have an escape route.

I explored David Neagle’s CASH INJECTION system today and yesterday with rather astonishing results.

I definitely would love a cash injection ASAP, although I also spent time with my Producer’s lawyer today fine-tuning an aspect of the screenplay option agreement that will yield me … well, a lot … at various movie-star driven events in the near-ish future.  [IE, that's beyond awesome but doesn't help out this week.]

So I rolled up my email and dialing sleeves today and after frankly a rather short round of reconnecting emails and calls, a few particularly AWESOME possibilities rolled in.  Plus it was fun to get back in touch with tons of people who were not on my immediate radar (and vice versa).

And now, just finishing up a little SHERLOCK and The Hounds of Baskerville and then to SLEEP!

“Never too old, never too bad, never too late, never too sick to start from scratch once again.” (Bikram Choudhury)

But I definitely like jumping rope even more.

This entry is short because I’ve been working up a storm all day.  MAJOR fundraising + finishing the draft for my Producer + jump rope and Bikram and a beach walk with Susan.

I also really enjoyed the Stan Lee documentary WITH GREAT POWER.  It was totally inspiring on multiple levels, including the fact that Marvel went bankrupt (even though the intellectual property of Spiderman alone is worth billions of dollars) and that his next venture collapsed under criminally corrupt management.

These starting-over events are mentioned only briefly in the film, and become just a small part of the fabric of his amazing, 89-year-old life.

I mean, Come On:  THE AVENGERS (which Sarah cast) just grossed a billion dollars.

Talk about a comeback!

It is odd to rejoice in your own worst images, but I’ve already lost 8 pounds on my Bikram/Jump Rope regime and it’s just begun.

[Proof:  Jenny, the owner of Acre, told Cody she'd noticed my transformation already, and neither one of us had mentioned our project to her.]

Some other thoughts ….

I think the new SHERLOCK on PBS is incredibly entertaining and truly clever.

I loved the Irene Adler actress and found out she was also on TRUE BLOOD as Sookie’s fairy godmother (there’s a long digression about this, but essentially that makes her an aspirational relative of mine.)

Bikram today was better than ever.

Tomorrow, we’re going for our most intense jump-roping yet.

I also must finish up the re-write of the script, but honestly I had endless anxiety dreams last night about various work situations (everything ends well for me, Edward Vilga, though –– rest assured) but this was echoed in that I completely balanced all my accounts and payments and seconds later, received a shocking email that my every-two-years web-hosting bill for all my sites had been automatically sucked out of my account via paypal, without even so much as a warning.  [If you are a true friend, you will remind me of this in May 2014, before it happens again.]

All easily solved but it did reinforce my realization that as soon as I gain supreme clarity about a topic, an old echo of the past vibration comes along to test it.

And in this instance, with a round of EFT tapping, I passed with flying colors.

[And by the way, this image is perhaps the BEST one of me –– gotta offset the masochism a bit with first Christmas Joy.  And let's be honest, I've never looked better!]

[Ironically, as I started this blog I simultaneously purchased David Neagle's newly released ebook MASTERING THE MASSIVE CASH INJECTION for $0.99 –– why have I done this when clearly I could just have Jonah mentor me...?  Or is it too early for the Jonah ebook on finance?]

Exponential jump-rope progress this morning, followed by a 2 hour read-through of the script at Caffe Puccini.  Lemonade stand visit and then more script notes, short nap, and then off to Bikram.

I will say this:  knowing the Bikram sequence has made all the difference (taking the experience from sheer torture to tolerable).  I’m not sure this is true for every Bikram student, but I function so much better knowing there are four poses before the water break, or how many there are before the first Savasana, or how many backbending ones there are, and on and on and on.

Somehow knowing the geography of the class has radically transformed my experience of it.  I have more to say on this –– the connections between uncertainty and hope and persistence and attitude –– but for now I’m just appreciating how much better my experience is.

And again, I’m too dazed from heat delirium and keeping a 120 page script’s structure in my head, but there’s something directly parallel about knowing what’s coming ahead and putting your lemonade stand in the right place.

[I just can't follow the thread any further tonight...]

One of the most radical things about Bikram is that you are more or less forced to look at yourself in the mirror for 90 minutes.

That’s pretty intense, right –– especially given that you’re often shirtless if you’re a guy or particularly exposed if you’re a lady.

It’s like a weird Louise Haye Mirror exercise –– except instead of positive affirmations you have someone shouting “Lock your leg!  You have no knee!” or something equally normative.  Time and time again, you’re directed to “meet your gaze in the mirror” — and yet given no instructions to blow kisses or “love and accept yourself completely.”

One week into my Bikram intensive, I have to say that there’s something radically transformative about this kind of extensive mirror work –- although I’m not sure if it’s perhaps just a byproduct of heat delirium.

In other news …

Beach walk this morning with Andrea Lake who’s visiting … Tremendous jump rope progress … Astonishing VAMPIRE DIARIES season finale (I’m basically hibernating now until the fall brings me back to Mystic Falls and Downton Abbey).

By the way, “Here’s Looking At You, Kid” is AFI’s number 5 greatest movie line of all time –– right between “Toto, I’ve got a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore,” and “Go ahead, make my day.”

Somehow, while staring at myself in the mirror for 90 minutes every day, that makes perfect sense.

[Although again, maybe it's just the 115 degrees and 24% humidity.]

Major yoga inversions practice.

Client calls and such.

Nap.

Then last minute invitation to baby-sit Jonah, which basically meant I wrote complaint emails while he played Skylanders.  Then we played Skylanders together.

Then I revised emails.

Then Clark’s friend Mark and Clark and I all had an amazing dinner which just ended.

And I’m left wondering why the phrase I’ve used in almost every yoga class –– some version of “Just let go” –– means something quite negative when it comes to one’s body –– “he’s let himself go” …

I’m Just Sayin’ …

Major progress at my morning jump rope routine.  (Seriously, getting boxer-worthy).

Awesome lunch with Amy Ahlers and Susan;  spectacular food and even more spectacular visualizations.

Fell in love with a new hangout, Cafe Puccini.

Bikram class –– with my new breathing consultant “enemy” in the exact same spot.

And now home –– beyond exhausted, and just as I was tapping for some clarity about … well, everything …  an amazing fan email for UPWARD DOG appeared and put everything in perspective.

And I just have to share this too:  Somehow I’d never seen the clip of Jennifer Holliday live at the Tonys in 1982 until today.  My Face Place friend Adam Feldman singled it out in TIME OUT NYC this week as the single greatest Tony performance ever and frankly, he’s probably right.  It’s insanely raw and animalistic.

To quote him:

And again, he’s right.

I think this LINK plays better, but here it is on youtube, too.

Fifteen minutes into class the (you supply your own adjectives) “lady” in front of me turned and said, “When you breath I can feel the warm air on me;  try breathing through your nose.”

Now, I was breathing through my nose (this is like my 4,000th yoga class) although it’s possible in an intense moment I might have sighed or perhaps even heaved –– but I’d like to point out that I was a) directly underneath the heating unit that had an external fan behind it b) this is apparently the hottest Bikram class in the world [it's 115 degree and 24% humidity] and c) given our mats, I was at least six or seven feet away from her … is she like a “princess and the pea” regarding air currents?

[FYI, as a test case, when I hold my hand out as far away from my face as possible, I have to breath in a "blow out all the birthday candles" way to really feel anything.  A heartfelt sigh at 3 feet produces almost no effect on my palm.  And again, did I mention the room is 115 degrees with a fan blowing on her and that she's six or seven feet away from me?]

More importantly, what was astonishing is that she felt free enough to confront me rather than just move away.    The class was only half filled and I was in the back row, she was in front of me, and there was no one in front of her.  IE, if someone’s breathing was bothering you, wouldn’t you just pull your own mat a few feet away before confronting another student in class?

I said nothing to her –– merely plotted revenge strategies for about 20 minutes, something that’s encouraged during yoga classes –– but then I began to turn the situation around in my head.

You see, I have two actually sweet characters in my life that I’ve been postponing conversations with about some iffy behavior.  In both cases, however, there’s no question in my mind that they are in different ways sweetly, but deeply, misguided and that there’s actually something substantially “off” that should be addressed.

Suddenly I began to admire the (you fill in the adjective) “lady” in front of me for her utter freedom to express herself.

She had no problem telling a stranger in a yoga class that she didn’t like his breathing, and that it must be changed since even in a room of 115 degrees where a fan was directly in front of her blowing hot air, his excess breath was simply too much heat.

How can it be that I’m holding off explaining to someone in the most sensitive way possible, “here are the sixteen ways those repeated remarks were bizarrely inappropriate” and yet she has the delusional chutzpah to critique strangers for their basic biological functioning.  [I began to wonder if I was perhaps sweating too loudly, or maybe my handsomeness was simply too distracting?]

It’s almost like she stole that part of my entitlement.  I mean, why is that I’m mustering up the courage to have a conversation about clear boundary violations, whereas she’s able to determine how other people get to breath around her wherever she’s plunked down her mat.

I have a lot to learn from her.

[Or maybe I should just hire her to have those kind of difficult conversations for me.  For her it comes as naturally as, well, breathing.]

[P.S.  I do love this Bikram studio –– the first he established in America –– and I think all the teachers have been awesome and NOT Bikram-Nazis at all.  But even more fun now to have an "enemy" there!]

All the changes are working and I see really the only serious thing that still requires tweaking in the script should just take a few hours/days.

I left elated and exhausted.

In fact, I reacted more like it was a premiere than “just a reading” — excitable non-restful sleep from 1 to 5 am, then woke up and puttered until 6 and then crashed until 11:30 am (something I haven’t done in years.)

Significantly –– speaking of premieres –– today I took the “before” pictures for my new yoga ab fitness project.

Note:  I still have many yoga tricks up my sleeve but right now I’m at my heaviest weight –– not great since it seems in seconds I will be mentoring a hot young star in the ways of yoga for the film –– so the regime is intensifying.

I asked Belle and my friend Cody –– he is a great guy and takes  all the photos for Acre & Acrimony here –– if he wouldn’t mind shooting a totally unflattering shot of me today –– a request photographers seldom get (I assume).  Cody was totally into it and even willing to do weekly-ish updates of my (soon to be remarkable) progress.

The first shoot today was simple and painless and then I whisked myself off to Bikram.

Truthfully this project is kinda brilliant –– but only provided there’s a major AFTER.

Otherwise, it’s rather insanely masochistic to get professional quality unflattering shots of yourself.

(I mean … really!)

But if it works –– and it should –– then it’s GENIUS.

Please stay tuned.

[NOTE:  as with Arnold, sometimes the AFTER isn't so great after all...]