On September 4th, the Friday before Jenna’s wedding, I was alone in the house with Peanut and Cassie (Melissa was down in South Jersey with Jenna and her parents getting ready for the big day–I was heading down the next day with my parents, anyway…) and I opened up my trusty Lap Top that I’ve had since 2003…and…

Flashback:

…since about 2003 the screen had been broken. About two weeks after getting it, the screen was shut on a pen and the right corner had been cracked.

I looked all over 2002 and 2003 for a good pic, the only one I could find other than this one (which does not have the crack, and is dated 1/17/03) is in my room at my parent’s house, with Mathew looking at it.

I got over it, and eventually treated the lap top as an actual computer, I attached a keyboard, mouse, monitor, etc…people would later confuse it with an actual desktop, but I used it. I wrote Ethan Ross on that computer, among many other papers and things.

It stayed with us as we moved into the apartment and then was retired in December 2006 when I bought the computer that I am currently writing on. For about three years it stayed in its case and in a closet and even during the move to the house and pretty much was in a happy retirement until this past Spring. After meeting with Adam (Chinoy), who always carries around his lap top with him and was using it during our meeting, I thought what a great way to stay off the grid and keep focused. I mean, Adam is always trying to find free internet, if the neighbors have it, but I didn’t need it, even if the option is there, I’d most likely go for it over actually writing.

So, I took out the ole lap top and plugged it in and to my surprise it still worked, it needed a good battery charging, but it was going. It had a pic of Peanut with his first Christmas tree in the background, which I’ll post below:

I also didn’t alter anything, I never changed the background pic, nothing was really moved or deleted. I liked living in my little 2006 time capsule, I don’t know why. It kept me in that zone.

Anyway, this past summer I wrote a script, which at the moment is being passed around to who ever wants to read it and get back to me on their thoughts.

I was happy to finally get a full feature length (actually its way way waaay over the page limit for a traditional feature length, but that’s fine) script. Its the first one in a while and I’m happy about that.

Present:

September 4th, 2009, this lap top has been around since 2003, and I open it up and turn it on and find that the screen has completely gone and it looks like this:

Needless to say, I obviously can’t do work on this lap top.

I was pretty freaking bummed out about this. I hate to say it, and its kind of like saying the Titanic is the ship that can not be sunk and it sinks on its maiden voyage, but as I was taking this computer out on September 4th, I considered the possibility that the lap top from 2003, the one that I spent my entire Junior, Senior and Masters years working on things and the early apartment years with, and the lap top that I just recently finished writing my first script in a few years with, could possibly be my “go to” machine for writing. It could possibly be the same thing as George Lucas’ “binder” that he wrote the original script for Star Wars (by hand!) and that he wrote the entire prequel trilogy on. It means something to him, he had to write it that way. All writers have those little quarks about them (including me). This was going to be my binder.

I swear to God I was thinking these things. I always left the lap top powering up to go on here and post a blog entry about it, but felt I would waste time.

So, as I was saying, I was pretty bummed out that I had even thought anything with the lap top in the future. It was not to be…

But, whatever, I mean, it sucks, but it served its purpose and I got my money’s worth out of that thing. I’m shocked it last this long to be quite honest with you.

Now, I know I have a desk top upstairs, but what do I do if I want to go places and type. I know, before Melissa and I went camping this past summer, I sat in her parent’s living room and typed twelve pages of action (no dialogue, simply description and action–it would take me four days to get over how much I wrote in a single hour. What I did in an hour would have easily taken me, normally, about a week). So, what’s a boy to do?

I have two options, neither of which completely plausible, but that’s why I’m throwing them both out into the universe and see which one is liked the best. One, I go with a normal PC (like a Dell) Lap Top and just use it to type and do what I have to or I go balls the the wall and get a Mac (which I have had a hard on for for Lord knows how long) that has capabilities and space and amazing speed for not only writing but editing film. I mean, I’m in no position to start cutting scenes together, but at one point a few years ago, I thought I was pretty good at it.

Do I really know what the future holds with a lap top? No. But I think that’s what makes it so much more exciting. I know for a fact that I’ve been back in the zone of writing since I completed my script this past summer. So much so that I actually began writing another one three days later. This morning, I came up with what had been missing out of another idea that I’ve been trying to write into a script since Fall of 2003, it just hit me. So, the writing bug is there.

But, with that said, what does everyone think? Leave me your comments and advice on what I should do about a lap top.

–Cos