From the San Diego Union-Tribune, Friday, January 7, 2000:

For a couple of years, I took my focus off writing. I attempted to study business, corporations, marketing. Something, I realized, held me back. The desire was still burning to create, and once I went back through my notes and files, I made a decision to write and market myself again. I intended to read this at a poetry night in San Diego, but I never had the opportunity.

It’s April again. Everything happens in April. My next 20 years of being a writer starts today.   Please enjoy this poem.

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The following has been edited for clarity, legibility, humor, intelligence, grammar, and redaction of embarrassing facts or opinions.

THIS MAY OR MAY NOT BE A TRUE STORY.

DT Log 1
Wednesday 29 March 1989.
Day’s Grade: B+

“AR”

Uh-oh.

It’s a fast-forward, rewind, fast-forward, get frustrated and say what the hell we’ll start in the middle job for Coach O’Malley.  Though we can’t see the absolute confusion behind his sunglasses.  Maybe if he took the sunglasses off, he’d see the VCR better.  Oh well, I guess he’s just not used to being indoors and seeing all the lazy students sitting around instead of running laps or doing pushups.

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1989:

Well, I might as well open up the archive.

One night after heavy drinking and laser tag (well, heavy caffeine drinking), Brad, Jon and I began discussing plans for a third Kung Fools movie at the Sports Arena Denny’s.  Also in attendence was my brother Kody and my wife Bronwynn.

For those unfamiliar with Kung Fools, it was the high school video short that Jon and Brad made for creative writing junior year, and then I took over the sequel for English class (and never finished) senior year.

This would have been a professional style reboot, remaking the first one, with me presumably getting in UFC shape and playing Flow-Jo, and I would have asked my friend Andrew Wood to play Emperor Chong.

The project never got off the ground and a few months later I entered the Project Greenlight Contest, and abandoned this script.

So, what I have here is the “first ten pages” of that script, and I think I have some funny stuff in there.  By this time, I had already finished five screenplays, and I apply those Syd Fieldian techniques here:

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Well, the requests are trickling in for classic DT Logs.  (Classic?)

I thought I might rev up your memories with an experimental feature, On This Day in the DT Log.

Here we go:

1989 – NINETEEN YEARS AGO

DT Log 6.3 – “More Rumours Françaises”

The entire French class was invited to submit untrue and somewhat scurrilous rumors to M. Silver, provided that they were in French.

I took the liberty of translating to English this hearsay!  Apparently our classmate Corbin was leading a double life!

Jeff and Corbin like Michael Jackson.

Bobby is going out with a snake.

Mitch has an A+ in French.

M. Silver is very, very thin.

M. Silver attends ballet.

Dan has a fat, beautiful girlfriend.

Chuck doesn’t believe in sadistic cows.

Corbin likes Corinna.

Corbin thinks he was John Lennon.

Corbin sleeps with a cow.

1991 – SEVENTEEN YEARS AGO

Senior Log #26 – “Teachers Left and Right”

An analysis of the most and least tolerant teachers I had at El Capitan.  M. Silver, #1 least tolerant, is mentioned yet again, “a total 180° turn from laissez-faire to control.” [Look, folks, I included a French term... wasn't I smart?]  Then goes, #2 – Westdal, #3 – O’Malley, #4 – Ellet, #5 – Dennison.

I recalled maybe the most amazing teacher quote of all time, from Mrs. Ellet, from 1989 Freshman English:

Do I have to do a striptease to get your attention?!

This quote is now urban legend, mainly because I wasn’t sure if I dreamt it due to nodding off in class.

Who was the most tolerant? #1 – Leiberknect, #2 – Anderson, #3 – Rosenburger, #4 – Shaffer, #5 – Till.

***

Well, I thought I’d have more material.  Eh bien.

Being the self-appointed layout editor of El Capitan’s school newspaper The Horizon, I absolutely newsgasmed when I could include elements a real newspaper would have, like continuing stories on another page, and in this case, adding an infobox previewing the Spring Band Concert.

***

X-Perience Rocks the Gym May 29th

[El Capitan Horizon, 1992]

“The theme is keeping your adolescent creativity and what your soul is made of,” explains Mark Stephan, who masterminded the idea of the X-Perience, a classical-rock fusion act to be performed on Friday, May 29th in El Cap’s Foster Gym as part of the band’s Spring Concert.

What is extraordinary about this concert is that this mix of classical piano composition with backing rock instrumentation was entirely realized by Mark and his crew, an eight person ensemble.  Mark plays in the concert piano and keyboards, along with keyboards by Chucki Parker, lead guitar by Troy Yasuda, saxophone and rhythm guitar by David Wiese, rhythm guitar by Jeremiah Myers, bass guitar by Christy Nunes, drums by Sean Preston, and on the trumpet, Chris Block.  There will also be a four person chorus accompaniment, which will sing along at times with the semi-improvised act.  “We will have to play by ear,” says trumpter Chris Block.  Mark adds, “Everybody adds their own improvisation, but the piano is the backbone.”

The primary song that will be played is Mark’s own “Sensual Mentality,” which existed only as a piano piece only two months ago, but now it will be backed up by other instruments as well.  “‘(Sensual Mentality)’ is about an adult who realizes what is important and what he needs to discover,” Mark explains the theme, “Instead of doing what is prudent for the time: the job, the house payment, etc.”

The theme of the show is enhanced by a small controversy concerning the original fliers: which was a print of Chucki Parker’s image of a doll with nails portruding from its head in the foreground, while a silhouette of a man was show in the background.  “People take things too seriously,” Mark said, “The first flier got a bad rap from administration because of its ‘vile content.’  They thought the doll was a baby with pins stuck in it.  Mark remarked the picture’s point was a man who was turning away from his youth, which is the ultimate source of inspiration.  “I think it would be shocking that people would oppress their adolescent creativity.”

Besides the photograph controversy, Mark explains why he attempted such a project.  “Thnis is (for most of us) our last year and we wanted to go out with a bang.  It is the perfect locale, since the audience is familiar, and there is no rent for the gym.”  The rigorous preparations for this event included three-day-a-week practice sessions, which not everybody could attend, but Mark says, “We have it down.  We’re ready.”  He adds, “I hope this encourages other musicians.”

[Spring Band Concert featuring the X-Perience Classical-Rock Fusion.  Date: Friday May 29, 1992.  Time: 7:30 pm.  Place: Foster Gym.  Prce: $3.00, on sale on the quad through Friday.

-Daniel Touchette

***

It’s a shame I couldn’t come up with a post-concert report, because the night was truly legendary.  As I recall, not only was the concert very good, being augmented by a surprise energetic Native American dance by Steve Curo,

but it ran so long over its allotted time that the power in the gym failed, ending the performance abruptly.  The musicians and the 400 spectators in attendance sat in the dark, waiting for the lights to power back on.

Of course, there were rumors that a certain vice-principal was quoted later as saying “this is my power failure.”

We never had confirmation (nor asked for it) that the veep in charge reset the circuit breaker, whether in panic or malice.  Any censorship in retrospect was ridiculous because the themes were largely innocuous.  However, the power failure has only strengthened the night as one of the most memorable in senior year.

Introduction

Ten years ago, when the government was wasting its time trying to impeach President Clinton for lying about his affair with Monica Lewinsky, I was probably at my most cynical.  Here I was, a registered Republican for four years trying to come to terms with some of my more liberal social beliefs, hoping to reconcile with the hardliners who made it their goal to enforce prohibition of every immoral act they could imagine.

Never mind that morality is subjective, and a socially conservative regime could easily declare nose-picking to be inherently iniquitous and jail people for it.

So I was in the mood to skewer faith-based groups, especially at the very local levels.  I thought to myself, Hmmm… Catholic church, Methodist, Episcopal: there are some perfectly good traditional places of worship out there.  So who is this Happy Valley Outreach Community Worship Chapel anyway?  And why are there 80 similar places in East County, scattered about the landscape as ubiquitous as taco shops and gas stations?

Then I found an “invitation flier” attached to my screen door.

Let the parody begin:

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Introduction

In 2002, the year of the El Capitan High School 10-year reunion, I was all about optimism without much of a solid foundation amid turmoil with my immediate family.  This was easily a time when money was not a problem and Bronwynn and I were doing a good job wasting it.

So, my plan was to create a DT Log Book to distribute to a select few people at the reunion.

I don’t remember the circumstances, but this plan, along with attending the reunion, was canceled due to an unforeseen financial emergency.

So here I present the introduction to that document after the leap.

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You can subtitle this entry How my stupidity actually saved me this time.

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