Contracts on Way to L.A.

As someone who hates meetings anyway, I can't help seeing this Zarqawi thing as a really bad example of one. Imagine a survivor typing up the minutes: "First Yousef said some things about....and then Zarqawi added some comments. Next we broke for coffee, then we got back to business, then two 500-pound bombs came through the roof. Oh yeah: The rest of the meeting was canceled." And speaking of two large bombs, I finally finished reading the contracts for the scripts. Today I initialed 28 pages and signed 4 more. Then I got them notarized which is something the producer connection in LA has never asked me to do before. Then I over-nighted them to Los Angeles. I knew things were going my way when the only other person in line at the Post Office was a beautiful woman who forget to do something and left the line moving me to the front.
There was a time when I went though a lot of symbolic rituals sending the stuff to L.A. I'd remember where I was, etc...in case I had to think back to the big day when I made the move that broke it wide open. That kind of enthusiasm has waned considerably. I must have sent around 50 separate over-nights to LA, and none of them led to anything. You always overnight things to give the impression that the Titans of Show Business cannot wait another second to get this. Oh well. I forced myself to try and make a ceremony this time just for the mindless hell of it. For example, when I first handed the latest script to the guy, he had just finished speaking at the Bagdad Theater. He was talking to someone and I was standing right next to the screen so I touched the script to it. Not for luck. Not for karma. Just for a detail later if I need to remember this and write about it. Okay, maybe a little for luck. So today I sat with my wife and signed while she ate breakfast. She's religious so I asked her to say a prayer this will work out. I told her that way, if it doesn't, I can blame both her and God. it's not always fun living with a professional comedy writer.
This script project really dented my head. It's been 5 long weeks. The first two banging out the script were fun, but rewriting it was a major drag, and dealing with the contracts is always a hassle. Both the producer and I are better at this than ever before. I saw many new phrases and many big numbers. Who knows what lies ahead? Maybe more meetings. Maybe economic freedom forever. The only thing I'm fairly sure of: None of those meetings will go as badly as Zarqawi's. If there are any 500-pound bombs here, they'll be in the form of bad movies.