Precious Nephew Photo

'Cuz sometimes I'm just a doting aunt. Though, slightly funny story here. When my dad joined the Navy, they "fixed" his ears -- surgically pinning them back. I guess they thought he might attract too much enemy fire with those big old Menes scoops. It looks like my nephew might have equally awesome bug catchers.

I'm guessing the Navy isn't so particular anymore. (Though Precious Nephew would much rather be a "shoulder" and live at the Pentagon anyway.)

When to hide your Emmys

My sister checked out some real estate a while back. At one posh home, the seller had his three (!) Emmys proudly on display. My sister was duly impressed.

Then she got home and looked up the name on the Emmys. She found out the guy -- one assumes the homeowner -- had just finished a nasty divorce and might need to unload his house quick. At whatever price.

The real estate agents aren't kidding when they tell you to hide personal stuff...

Vindication!

One of my favorite parts of the whole coverage process is writing that one-sentence premise: trying to boil down exactly who and what the writer has been going on about for the last 90-120 pages.

Early on I figured out the basic rule. Who's the protagonist? That's the subject of your sentence. What does he spend the movie doing/figuring out/choosing between? That's the verb. Frequently I get scripts with old coverage attached. And it surprises me how many times the last coverage writer got this wrong. Dead wrong. Really, really stupidly wrong -- dropping the protagonist off into a prepositional phrase and featuring some supporting character as the subject.

Yesterday my brother -- who went to the University of Chicago and attended their famous Little Red Schoolhouse writing classes -- informed me that the number one rule of good argument writing was exactly this. The subject of your story/argument/paragraph is the subject of your first sentence. What he/she/it does is the verb.

Wa-hoo. And I didn't even have to move to Chicago to learn this.

Speaking of rules

A subrule: If there's a nifty classical term for your rule-breaking, you might be okay.

From Wikipedia: Hyperbaton. A figure of speech in which words that naturally belong together are separated from each other for emphasis or effect.

Happy this makes me.