a blast from the past!
holy cow.
i got an email this morning saying an old college prof from grad school was trying to get in touch with me. the poor man had been turning the internet upside down trying to find me, all to no avail, and had finally hit pay dirt by looking up some folks from ratmm and asking after me (many million thanks for passing on the info, noah; you're truly a prince among elder statesmen!). anyway, he wanted my permission to pass on my thesis script to a friend of his, but mostly just wanted to get in touch again to see how i was.
it's incredibly moving when you discover that someone you think such a lot of cares that you're still on the planet. i had a blast in this prof's thesis class, and i always think of him whenever i'm giving feedback on something: 'god, how would tom phrase this? he always gave the best feedback.'
in addition, i got to learn what he's been up to these past eleven-odd years. he's been working in television and teaching more screenwriting classes, which is a tremendous boon to both the tv and academic worlds. more recently, he's also directed two music videos, to two of the most moving songs i've ever heard: 'walk on' and 'i would die for that' by kellie coffey. they're about breast cancer survival and the loss of a child, and if you pay no heed to anything else i'm gabbling about on this soapbox of a journal, please watch them both. trust me, you'll be very glad you did.
Click to viewalso, yet another warm fuzzy: tom reminded me that the divine miss coffey had actually read a character for me in my thesis script, when he invited her and her husband to our thesis class with some other actor friends to read portions of our screenplays out loud. and so memorably, wickedly funny was her reading that i can still hear it in my head to this day, despite not having listened to the tape in at least ten years: 'hello steweeeeeeeey! hello mister and mrs greeleeeeeeeeeeey!'
here's one of the only pics i've got from that year, from when tom and pat took our class out to a very swish restaurant to celebrate us all completing our scripts (tom's the beardy fellow directly behind me, with the odd decor seemingly growing out of his head):
good on ya, blomquist!
Q
apologies to anyone whose f'list this kills, but no way is it going under a cut, because HELLYEAH IT IS JUST THAT AWESOME