100 Days.

First, to answer your burning question, did I write 100 pages of script in the month of April? No, as you could expect. I think I wrote 2 pages. Bummer.

Last week, President Obama and I celebrated 100 days at our new jobs. I remember fondly on January 20th as I hurried around Philadelphia's Chinatown to find a television screen and at about 11:55 am, ran into the Greyhound station to see Aretha Franklin's hat and the end of Biden being sworn in. I cheered with everyone else in the station as Barack Hussein Obama was sworn in as the countries first good president in 40 years. I listened to his Inaugural address for a few minutes and then bolted to the Chinatown bus to arrive in New York for my first day at BBC...

So, after 100 days, how am I doing? I miss Philly a lot. Probably not as much now as when I first moved here. But I do miss my friends and a lot of things in Philly. If I were to win the lottery, I'd move back to Philly in a heartbeat and be content with visiting NYC once a month or so. Other then job oppertunities and shows at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre, I really don't see anything that New York offers that Philly doesn't, except in Philly it's more convienient and cheaper. But, I'm here to stay as long as I want to keep following this dream of making a stupid TV show one day.

I'm almost ready to say that I would be pretty happy if I never had to ride the New York City subway system ever again in my life. I wouldn't mind doing it maybe twice a week, but every day can be annoying and it takes sooo long from to get to Manhattan from lower Brooklyn. I probably spend a good hour and a half every day on the subway. Plus, they want to raise the month pass from $81 to $104. Ridiculous. And then their ad campaign for this is "For $104 a month, you'd think they'd have a pool and a sauna down there." No. Shut the hell the up. For an extra 23 bucks a month there should be a pool down there. I also heard they are planning on cutting some services because they can't afford them. Ughhh. I wish I could bike to work.

On the other hand, there have been a lot of good and cool things about moving here. I see Jordan at least once a week, which is awesome. We've only gone to the UCB theatre once, but I'm sure we'll be going more often before he leaves. There definitely tons of job oppertunities here for me. I've been pretty swamped lately with work, but if anything ever happened, there are lots of other production companies I could try to work at, where in Philly there wasn't much, and when someone would have a show, there's lots of competition for it.

There are a few people from Bloomsburg here. I've been trying to meet up with them. I haven't seen them in years. But it's hard with my schedule and stuff, I kinda gave up. I should try again. There are so many things to see and do here and I've barely started.

In the Garage Where I Belong

no one hears me sing this song.

This is about all of you.
This is about none of you.

I'm sorry I'm not what you are looking for.
But I didn't expect you to disappear like that picture from Back to the Future.

Dear Jesus,

I keep trying to come back to You. But when stunts are pulled like what just happened, it gets harder for me to do so. It gets harder for me to do a lot of things. Maybe we should have a one-on-one soon. How about in my dreams? Hopefully, You can tell me what You want. I think You already know what I want.

Love,
Dustin

P.S. Who is this Beth girl?

There's No Place Like Home

I've been meaning to update for a while, so I'll talk about going home for Easter. After sleeping for about 3 hours, I woke up on Friday, gathered up all my stuff and managed to catch the 12pm train from Penn Station to Harrisburg, PA. Since the train took me down to Philly and then up to Harrisburg, next time I'll just take my beloved Chinatown bus to Philly. It'll be a lot cheaper.

On my train ride down, I took a seat next to a large bag and a coat. I wondered who they belong to? After a few stops on the train, no one came to claim them, so I wondered what happened to their own. While at the Trenton stop, this young girl got on the train and was very frantic, having just barely made the train with her enormous suitcase. I helped her lift it on to a cart. After a couple minutes, she came back, not being able to find a seat, and asked if anyone was sitting next to me. Well, those of you who know me will probably not be surprised as i quickly grabbed the belongings in the seat next to me, threw them up top, and said "no, this seat is open". ha. she was pretty young. A freshman in college.

(the woman who owed the stuff came back towards the end of the trip and picked it up. Where had she been and why did she leave her stuff there?)

I got off the train and soon my Dad picked me and we headed home. Later that night, me and Mom got new LG VU phones, which is kinda exactly like an iphone except it costs a lot less. While we were at the Frackville Mall, I saw several security guards. This was pretty weird, because I have never seen a security guard there before. And more importantly, how is this mall even still open? a lot of the stores are vacated. Which makes the security guards even more weird.

Saturday night, Phil and I went to Maggie's house where we played Lego Indiana Jones. Chris and Sydney joined us and we all had a good time.

Sunday was Easter, and my sister managed to find 2 hours to stop in for dinner and then leave immediately to go back to school. Later in the day, I went with my parents to Williams Valley to the cemetery. We saw Maggie's parents there. My dad went to high school with Maggie's dad and they have the exact same birthday. I saw where (I think) 3 of my great-great grandparents are buried. I also learned my maternal grandmother was named after her maternal grandmother, so I learned a lot about my great-great grandparents this weekend.

So for those of you playing at home, the linage goes: Dustin Kaster-Edward Kaster-Edward Kaster-John Kaster-Jacob Kaster (I saw his tombstone). Is he the one who came over from Germany?

100 Pages

This website, http://www.scriptfrenzy.org/ is hosting a challenge to everyone who signs up to write 100 pages of script during the month of April. I can do that, right? Any ideas?

Because You Left

Friday was my first time back to Philly since moving out on January 31st. I've been very anxious for a trip, because I love Philly so dear. And as you may recall, one of the shows I was working on was canceled, hence why I could stay in Philly for 3 days.

I was amazed at how much things have changed in just the short time I've been gone. Brian re-decorated the house, people have new and exciting things going on in their lives, Adam and Ciana are now working for the Dharma Intuitive. It's crazy.

I arrived Friday night for Brian's party in the house were I last lived before leaving. The party started at 8:00, so being the casually late person I am, I was the first to arrive at 8:15. But soon others arrived, including, but not limited to: Sara Finne, Marybeth, Caitlin Carney-Jones, Stu and Mark Downing. Alan and Amber also came! It was a great time. It was too bad that Jenn was not there, but her band, Love City, is on tour right now.

Other good news, Marybeth and Leslie Nichols have started a video production company called Junkdrawer Media, Ink. Their website is very awesome: www.junkdrawermedia.com

Saturday, I hungout with Kelly B. for a bit. We walked around and she picked out a new pair of shoes for me at Payless. They were $22! She left to go watch some kids and soon I caught up with Ciana and then were joined by Alan, Amber and Adam (the A Squad) for dinner in Chinatown. Dinner was a good time.

Next, there was pre-gaming at Amber's apartment and we headed to The Barbary. This local Philly band called The Lemon Treasure played, and they are now my favorite band ever. We even tricked one of the girls in the band to get a picture with us in the photo booth.

Sunday, me, Alan and Amber made breakfast and watched The State on VHS. The State is hilarious. I can't believe I have never seen it before. Oh Michael Ian Black. You ARE ashamed of being jewish.

Overall, it was a really great time, and I'm glad I got to see a lot of people in Philly. I also spent a lot of time being drunk, for good or bad. (probably bad)

One Man Show

[Author's note: as expected, I didn't come up with an idea for a movie or tv show. oops.]

Tonight, Jordan and I went to a show at The Upright Citizen's Brigade Theater, or UCB. First, we're preeeeetty sure we saw Zach Galifianakis in attendance. That was pretty cool. We saw two performances. The 2nd performance I'm sorry to say was not really funny and consisted of a few people doing about 9 short sketches.

But the first performance was amazing. It was presented as this crazy, celebrity lady having recently died and everyone in the audience was attending her funeral. A portion of her video will would be played on the screen and then she would talk about a person close to her. Then this girl (who had played the celebrity on the tape) would come out and play the character. Some of the characters she played were a 9 year old niece, a blind cousin, a lawyer, and Gloria Estefan. It was funny and I loved how the video was mixed into the performance.

I think I may have realized two things tonight. 1) I want to marry this girl. 2) I would love to do something like this myself one day. It's been a long time since those high school musical days.

I remember after my first year of Bloom when I realized I hated it there, I had seriously thought about dropping out and moving to Chicago to take classes at Second City. Things have certainly worked out very well for me, so I guess I made the right decision. I could take classes in improve or sketch writing at the UCB, Jordan has taken a couple.

But I think doing a one man show is something I would want to do. I have thought about doing stand-up, but I don't think I'd be good at telling straight-up jokes, where as telling stories is something I can be good at.

Did this entry have a point?

The Highs and Lows of Being Number One.

The show I work on got canceled on Monday. Oops. Luckily my company has a couple other shows in production, so I still have work, but this does suck.

Sunday, Jordan and I went to the A. C. Newmen show. You should know, since I had never heard of A. C. Newmen, singer of The New Pornographers, that I made several jokes to Jordan, including revolving around Newmen from Seinfeld, Pornography, and singing that "Music in You" song by The New Radicals. Well done.

Before the show, we went to Katz deli and bought really expensive, but really delicious sandwiches. I, of course, got the Reuben. It was fantastic, and they give you a lot of pickles on the side. The best part though, was seeing an asian girl who looked a lot like Lindsay from Freaks and Geeks, including a green jacket! We nick-named her "Asian Lindsay".

The opening band for A. C. Newmen was Dent May. They were really good, a lot of energy. Newmen joked that the bands they get to open for them always end up becoming really popular really fast, case in point the last band that opened for them was Vampire Weekend. So keep an eye on these Dent May kids. Maybe look them up on MySpace if you can even bring yourself to log-on to that anymore.

I hate to talk about TV again, but I will. Last weeks episodes of 30 Rock and The Office were fantastic. I was impressed. Dollhouse has been getting better. Friday's episode promises to be the best episode of the series ever. And LOST has been all over the place this season, but there has been some really great episodes.

Okay, let me try this. The next time I write a blog entry, it will have to be about an idea for a TV show or movie. Okay, let's see what I can come up with.