Day 54 – Domino’s Pizza and Comedians

This is somewhere at a beach in LA.

Today was my last full day in Los Angeles. I spent that day wisely by eating Domino’s Pizza and watching comedians like Jim Gaffigan, Louis CK, Brian Regan, and Russell Peters on YouTube.

When I was in fifth grade or so, my friends told me I should become a comedian when I grow up. I was the class clown. I made the jokes and the class laughed. I wrote funny essays that were read out loud by the teacher in order to shame me, but the class just erupted in a chaotic choir of laughter. I love humor. It’s always been a part of my life. When I was in a freshman in high school, I discovered sarcasm. I immediately fell in love with it. I overused it according to my French teacher. She told me that sarcasm can be intelligent but at a certain point it’s too much.

You know how sometimes your sarcasm is so advanced that people think that you’re stupid? And then you can’t be like, “No, I was being sarcastic.” They’ll just write it off as some excuse for your stupidity. I hate those situations. Usually what I do is I sit down on the ground and look up at the person or the group and quote the esteemed Fyodor Dostoevsky.

Sarcasm: the last refuge of modest and chaste-souled people when the privacy of their soul is coarsely and intrusively invaded.

That quote holds so many good, complicated words that it just makes you seem intelligent when you quote it without missing a beat. It’s like learning just one sentence of a foreign language, and when someone asks you if you speak that language, you just say that one statement that you have perfected. Like when I’m in France and someone asks me if I speak French, I reply, “Je ne le comprends pas” in the best French accent I can attempt to express. They usually think about it for a second and then laugh and continue spewing foreign words in rapid French. Brilliant plan.

Day 53 – Lunch at The Cheesecake Factory

His breath reeked of fish.

It was awesome. I’ve never been to The Cheesecake Factory although I’ve passed many over the nine weeks that I’ve been in the States. If you haven’t been to The Cheesecake Factory yet and you live in the States… then that’s alright, you don’t have to go. I just highly recommend it, that’s all. I had some enchiladas with rice and black beans. It sounded like the perfect meal to get at a restaurant like the Cheesecake Factory.

So Joe and I met with this elderly woman who works with the LAPD and with children and with all kinds of social entrepreneurs around the globe. It was inspiring to hear her stories about the orphans who were rescued from homelessness and malnourishment in countries like Brazil and Indonesia.

She also gave us a book called The Creature from Jekyll Island, which I’m super excited to read because it’s about economics. I’m really interested in finances because the second (or maybe the third) novel of our series will be about the global economic system. I mean, I’ve researched quite a bit and read a lot of books about it, but TCfJK will probably be the best read out of all of them. Or so I’ve heard. We’ll see.

Other than that, Joe and I have been writing our novel and we’ve made quite a bit of progress developing an additional character we thought we might add to the story because she contributes a very important aspect of the plot. It’ll be a little tough, though, because Joe is flying to New York tomorrow and I’ll be flying up to Seattle on the same day, so we won’t be able to write this book together in person, which will be a bit difficult. But thank technology for Skype and Facebook. We’ll figure it out.

Day 51 and 52 – Meeting Inspiring People

I found these fake glasses. #nerd #lol #hashtag

Day 51

We met with a cinematographer at some Starbucks near Pasadena. He’s a youthful dude who filmed some music videos for artists like Akon and Wiz Khalifa. We talked about the media and how you can’t trust anyone. That’s actually one of the last words my uncle told me before he passed away. He said, “If there’s anything that I’ve learned in my life, it’s that you cannot trust anyone.” He had been in the world of business and economics and entrepreneurship and real estate for more than 45 years, so he knew what he was talking about. Anyway, it was a lot of fun talking to someone who is actively involved in the filming business in Hollywood. Joe and I asked him if he could make a movie out of our novel once it’s done and he said that if the funds are available he could do it. Let’s see.

In the evening, Joe and I went to play some indoor football with some other young guys. I’m talking, of course, of the sport where there’s a ball and you kick it with your foot. Hence the name. I didn’t tell them where I’m from or what I have been doing in terms of athleticism for the past six years. So I played and then they asked me if I play at a college level. It’s funny playing football in the United States. The level of technique and mentality and strategy in the States does not come close to the level I experience in Germany. My coach gets extremely upset when I play a mediocre pass to my teammate. It’s either perfection or bench.

Day 52

We woke up early to drive to LAX to pick up and hang out with Vishal, who is an Indian social reformer, philosopher, writer, teacher, and a bunch of other things. So Joe and I and Vishal had a nice walk on the beach near LAX and talked about philosophy, education, and media. Then we stopped by the Fish Bar and had fish ‘n chips for lunch. We dropped him off at LAX and then drove over to Long Beach to meet up with one of my dad’s friends. He’s also a writer, so we talked about writing novels and non fiction and where to get inspiration from and all that. It was enlightening and very inspiring.

So now Joe and I are actually writing our novel. The planning is done, so we’re sitting here and typing away, creating the actual scenes and stuff. It’s a lot of fun, and I’m learning how to paint beautiful pictures with words. 

Day 48, 49, and 50 – Writing, Writing, Writing

I took this masterpiece while watering the flowers in the backyard. @jannesint on Instagram

Day 48

We planned more novel stuff like character arches and the appearance and character of the antagonist. What do you think of the name Horace? Pretty fly for a bad guy. If you have any character name suggestions, feel free to keep it to yourself or write them out in the comments. But who writes comments anymore, right? People just go on the “Reader” page on WordPress and just “like” random posts with good titles and good pictures. Very few people actually click on the link to the post and read the post and leave a constructive comment. We don’t care much about what other people write. We just want our stuff to be read by other people. That’s the heart of “narcissistic blogging” or whatever you want to call it.

Day 49

I’m serious, the more I go to church, the less I like it. I get so fed up with it every time. I’ve been to hundreds and hundreds of churches now, and there wasn’t one church that talked about things that are really exciting. Things that Jesus talked about in the Bible. Like economics and education. All I hear about is grace and love and kindness and forgiving and all of that lamb stuff. Christians seem to forget that God is a king, too. A freaking lion. He doesn’t sit in a corner and applaud mediocrity. He’s a game changer. But churches aren’t game changers. So something’s wrong with that picture.

Day 50

Today, Joe and I printed out our story line and cut up all the scenes into individual scene paper stripes. Then we laid them out on the floor and organized them chronologically. That was really helpful, and I now have a much better understanding of the novel. I know what happens when and why and how. It’s getting really exciting now, because I can picture the scenes like in a movie. I’m almost 110% positive that our novel won’t be turned into a major motion picture, but in my head, it’s a pretty legit blockbuster. I can’t wait for it to be finished and published. Hopefully.

Day 46 and 47 – Blogging

This is an irrelevant picture of Seattle that I took a few weeks ago.

Day 46

We didn’t really do all that much that day. In the evening, however, we watched The Shawshank Redemption. I thought it was an absolutely incredible movie. My two friends thought it was pretty good but not absolutely incredible. So I threw a figurative glass of cold water in their faces and had them cower on a couch while I held a literal speech about freedom, truth, and hope at midnight. It was arguably one of my best speeches I had ever delivered.

Day 47

We met with a blogger at Starbucks somewhere on the outskirts of Pasadena. It was… nice. I couldn’t really learn much from him because what he told us I had already learned in 2011 after high school while working with those marketing and sales companies in the States and in Germany. But it was fun to learn about his history, how he became a blogger, why he writes columns for the local newspaper and why he thinks writing for TV shows and the radio are conducive to becoming a better writer. He also said that there’s hope for the continued existence of newspapers because some people do prefer holding a newspaper in their hands instead of reading about it online.

I’m currently reading Dean Koontz’s book Intensity. It’s pretty intense. Bet you didn’t see that pun coming. The opening scene seems to be dragging on and on forever. For the first couple of chapters, you see the entire world through the eyes of the protagonist, Chyna. I’m kinda craving a different view for at least a few paragraphs. But oh well. I shouldn’t be complaining. Dean has written dozens and dozens of novels whereas I’m not even published yet. But that will change by the end of this year. I hope. God, I really hope so.

I used “hope” in all three paragraphs. That’s pretty cool. Well, make that four now. Boom.