How's this for a spiffy quote?

"I am going to Granada, señor," said the gentleman, "to my own country."
" And a goodly country!" said Don Quixote.





The Court of Lions: Coming Sooner and Sooner to a Theater Near You!

"When one door closes another door opens; but we so often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door, that we do not see the ones which open for us."
~ Alexander Graham Bell

"When you feel like giving up, remember why you held on for so long in the first place."
~ Unknown

Never Give a Damn About Your Bad Reputation!

After 23 rejections from every record label in town -- and this is after already playing in The Runaways -- Joan Jett started her own damn record label and recorded "I Love Rock and Roll." It was a hit!

Check out her video to "Bad Reputation." It's essentially Joan Jett rubbing this fact into the face of everyone that ever rejected her or told her she couldn't sing.

African Queen...

"All appears lost when Charlie and Rose "lose the channel" and the boat becomes mired in the mud amid dense reeds near the mouth of the river. First, they try to tow the boat through the muck, only to have Charlie come out of the water covered with leeches. All their efforts to free the African Queen fail. With no supplies left and short of potable water, Rose and Charlie (the latter suffering from a feverish attack of malaria) turn in, convinced they have no hope of survival. Before going to sleep Rose prays that she and Charlie be admitted into Heaven. As they sleep, exhausted and beaten, heavy rains raise the river's level and float the Queen off of the mud and into the lake which, it turns out, is just a short distance from their location..."

From: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_African_Queen_(film)

Take the advice of a Pixar dude!

Michael Giacchino's Oscar acceptance speech. (He's the composer from Up-- Pixar people always give the best speeches!)


Find more videos like this on Soundtrack Fans

set a goal and make it happen!

This is a very good post from the writer of Save the Cat.

Maybe there are.

Maybe there are reasons you can't.
Have you ever spent an hour on your hair?
You used the Karatase hair serum. You got a CHI hairdryer. Used an ceramic/ionic brush. Parted hair into a zillion little sections.
And your hair still ends up frizzy?

Maybe just let it air dry.
Maybe you're meant to have curly hair.

Maybe there is a reason you can't.

Life is short.

Write the President?

One of my students got all wound up while he was working on a writing prompt the other day. He was more opinionated than I'd ever seen him. So I said, "Hey, why don't you write a letter to the editor or write the President or something?" He looked stunned. He'd never thought of that. Right away he started talking about how it would probably never get to him, no one would read it. But someone would! Even if it just went into a count -- another one in favor of XYZ or against ZYX -- his voice would be heard.

I could see the wheels churning in his head. So (even though I could tell this was bugging the HECK out of the other teacher in the classroom) I told him if he wanted to write a letter and if he made it really good, I'd get him an envelope with the address on it and a stamp.

Write a letter to the president? Let the voice of an 8th grader from a small town in Texas be heard? There's no reason you can't!

Use the Force!

I found this quote. It fits the themes of this blog, so here you go:

“Often the difference between a successful person and a failure is not one has better abilities or ideas, but the courage that one has to bet on one's ideas, to take a calculated risk - and to act.”
-Andre Malraux


George Lucas was turned down by every studio in Hollywood for his space western idea. But at the Barton AMC the other day I noticed not one but TWO video games, over 30 years later, based on his space western idea.

Actually here's the direct quote from IMDB: "His script for Star Wars (1977) was turned down by every major Hollywood studio, the reason being that no one would want to see it. In a last ditch attempt, Lucas approached 20th Century Fox who decided to go ahead with the script even though they were convinced it would flop. Star Wars ended up becoming the highest grossing movie ever released at that time. It still ranks as one of the highest grossing movies ever made to this day."