A Long Week in Los Angeles
This is Finish Your Monsters, a weekly blogletter about the creative process. I'm sharing adventures in art and life as well as setting CLIFFHANGER goals for myself, so--
DID I MAKE MY GOAL?
Last week, I committed to the goal of editing the next two scenes of the horror movie I’m working on, Dead Media.
I got that done—but only because I delayed putting this blog out for a day and a half. So, a muted hooray for me.
Editing work is great fun once you get in the groove. But it takes a great amount of concentration. Between difficult political realities, the fires in Los Angeles, social media disinformation horrors (find me here on bluesky!) and more, concentration has been in painfully short supply.
Last week I wrote about my realistic yet ambitious goals for 2025 and I want to follow up by acknowledging how incredibly hard goals are in cruel, cruel January.
I love the “out with the old, in with the new” reset provided by the new year. But as a society we have set up an absolute cruelty to ourselves. On January 1st, we imagine the things we want to make better in our lives—exercise, creativity, more time with friends, etc. And then here comes January, smacking us in the face like a fist with enough fingers you could get “back to the grind” tattooed across the digits.
All I want to do is focus on my big picture goals and instead it’s cleaning from the holidays, tax prep, the flood of “back in the office” emails, and on and on.
Next year, I might consider making my resolutions on a random Tuesday in June.
ADVENTURES OF THE WEEK--
The two biggest events of the week were FIRE and COMEDY.
I went for a walk on Tuesday as the winds were picking up. At first, it was just, “Yep, here come those wild Santa Ana winds. Look at how far those palm trees are bending.” Then a gust came up behind me that almost threw me into the street and I headed home. That night, the huge and horrible fires in the Pacific Palisades and Altadena began. It was heartbreaking and terrifying.
On Wednesday morning, from my apartment in east Hollywood, the sky to the north was a gorgeous peaceful blue and to the south it was red and grey brimstone clouds.
I tried to get on with my day. I was on my computer playing an RPG with some friends from back home in Minneapolis. I glanced out my window where the top of a hill pokes out above the apartment building across the street. I always wondered what hill that is. That night, I found out it was Runyon Canyon.
First I saw a plume of dark smoke. Then I saw the hill suddenly blaze orange with the same intensity as if I’d flicked on a zippo two inches from my face.
Sara got home from work and we packed our bags. I’d joked for years the one action figure I’d take with me in an emergency is my original Yoda with hard, orange snake from 1981. It was really awful to put that to the test. Truly awful to look around your home and ask—what here is it IMPOSSIBLE to replace with money?
We got extremely, extremely lucky. We were about one block outside of the evacuation zone. The winds had died down so the heroes in the LAFD were able to contain what they called the Sunset Fire. Sara and I stayed up until the wee hours watching the news.
On television, we watched a helicopter swoop past the blaze, dropping water. Then turned and looked out the window just in time to see the orange glow flicker out on the hill.
When we went to sleep, I set my alarm to wake me up in the night to check if any fires were close enough that we should leave.
It was a harrowing night. And again, we were amazingly lucky. Like most people in Los Angeles, I have friends who lost their homes. Friends who lost their entire neighborhood. Friends who went days without power. Friends who are still on high alert for evacuation.
I wanted to post about the fires but I got so angry I didn’t trust myself to post. The fires were unprecedented but not unpredicted. Scientists have been warning of the dire effects of climate change for decades. And we’re at a point in society where a handful of mid-life crisis billionaires want to accelerate the destruction of the planet so you can use AI to write LinkedIn posts for you.
What infuriated me was the sheer lack of humanity. About the fires. About the politicians who benefit from denying the climate catastrophes. About the mid-life crisis billionaires who don’t care who suffers as long as they don’t have to pay more taxes. And putting their entire backs behind AI—a technology that I think might be valuable someday in some applications. But right now, it’s robbing artists, endangering the planet, and advocating for LESS direct human connection and expression. And they’re determined to make it INEVITABLE regardless of what consumers actually want.
In all honesty, I did not plan to write so much about my anger (and this is after I deleted several more ranting paragraphs!) so here’s a picture of Smokey The Bear to reset.
By Thursday, I needed to turn my attention to a comedy show I had been booked on. My friend and podcast partner Ken Napzok had a gig at a comedy club in Burbank called Flapper’s.
They made the somewhat controversial choice to move forward with the show on Friday when many, many things were still closed. I didn’t want to let Ken down and I wanted to follow through on my commitment.
So I channeled some of my frustrations into a new stand-up bit about martinis. I had tried to order one at a restaurant with a full bar and the server told me I couldn’t because the ordering system on her iPad “didn’t have a button for that.” Again, they had a full bar. I could physically see all TWO of the ingredients needed to make a martini and the human bartender right over there. But no martini because the system says “there’s no button for that.”
Not a big deal at all and I said nothing because I didn’t want to bother a stressed and overworked server. But it captured something I feel strongly about—letting rigid, unnatural systems block flowing human interaction. Those mid-life crisis billionaires really, really want us to only do things they let us have buttons for.
Anyway, the martini bit went great and the martini prop was fantastic. There was a good audience at the comedy show. An audience who made the choice to come out to a comedy show because it was what they wanted and they needed. It’s easy to say comedy is a service to people in stressful times. But I always want to check my ego and make sure it is actually the people the comedy is serving and not my own desire to get a laugh.
But the human connection was good, honest, and wanted. All the comedians were warm, friendly, funny, and full of life. The crowd was laughing—even the people who said they enjoyed the show while they were still checking their phones to keep an eye on the fires.
As the days went on, more and more stories bubbled up of people in LA helping each other out. People expressing their love for this place as a COMMUNITY not just a stereotype and a punchline. Their love of the history embedded in this place. Firefighters from Canada and Mexico coming to help. The incredibly valuable service from the non-profit app, Watch Duty, keeping people informed with the ongoing fires.
It was a hard, hard week and that’s coming from someone who is mind-bogglingly lucky. I saw human connection horrifically challenged but I also got to see human connection validated. And I’m going to try to focus on that.
This post was so much longer than I meant it to be, thanks for sticking with me. Anyway, at Flappers you have to step outside to get to the green room so here’s a picture of me in my final form: Wearing a Guns N’ Roses shirt while sipping a martini on the streets of Burbank in the middle of a comedy show.
LIGHT PLUGS—
We’ve got a fiscal sponsorship with the great Minnesota organization Film North. They can accept one-time donations that will go directly toward finishing the film: SCORE, VFX, COLOR GRADING, etc. It’s like a Kickstarter where the rewards are A) a tax deduction and B) helping us make the film.
For full info, please check out the page for the upcoming horror film, DEAD MEDIA!
Or if you have any questions about supporting the film, feel free to reach out to me personally!
MY GOAL FOR THE WEEK--
This Tuesday, I’m flying back to Minneapolis to visit family and do more movie clean-up at my Dad’s house. So I need to be very realistic about my goal. So my goal for next week is to send 3 movie related emails and finish editing one more scene of Dead Media.
YOUR GOAL FOR THE WEEK--
I would absolutely LOVE to hear what you're working on this week in the comments below. What's your goal? How can I help you literally finish your monsters?
A LITTLE SKETCH--
This week’s sketch is Smokey The Bear doing stand-up and ready to go after hecklers with a shovel. I hope everyone has good adventures finishing their monsters this week and the spirit of Smokey The Bear helps you.
