Planet Of The Apes Meets Jurassic Park

"Caesar, we found an island for you. It's in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, 
off the coast of Costa Rica. I think you'll really like it." 
"Caesar will go. No more stupid humans."

I spent a rainy Sunday afternoon watching a Jurassic Park marathon. I'm a sucker for a good creature feature. In the third installment of the Jurassic Park (2001) franchise, part of the storyline is the Velociraptors (raptor) are intelligent and can communicate with one another with specialized calls. That aids them in hunting and they can also call one another for help. Dr. Alan Grant (Sam Neill) gives a lecture in which he theorizes that had it not been for the cataclysmic event that wiped out all dinosaurs, raptors could have become the dominate species on earth.

Hmm...

In come the apes. 

One intelligent species against another.

Random Musings and Atria Books Literary Salon Series Part Deux

Once again, Random Musings has been selected to be an exclusive blog partner for the Atria Books Literary Salon Series. This month's Salon will feature an interview with Sister Souljah. She will be discussing her new novel, Midnight and the Meaning of Love, which was released on April 12. The interview will be moderated by Jada Pinkett Smith.


Visit Random Musings on Saturday, April 30 to watch the livestream from the LA Times Book Festival. 7:30pm EST/ 4:30pm PST.


I'm very excited that I was selected to partner with Atria Books again. I read Sister Souljah's The Coldest Winter Ever back in college. That, Push by Sapphire and the film Memento were huge influences on a screenplay I wrote in 2002, Ebony, New York.

The Romantic, The Writer and The Sociologist

I just watched Before Sunset (2004). I heard about it on the special Unseen: France during a segment on the bookstore Shakespeare and Company I watched earlier that afternoon. I’m so glad I watched the movie. It totally put me in the mood for romance, friendship, writing, Paris and Tom all at once. It touched on all the “what ifs” in life and getting second chances. The writer in me loved the dialogue, the screenplay. I’m inspired to go back to the screenplays I wrote around the same time (2002-2004). I remember I’d come up with my elevator speech about how I write character-based screenplays. It was the characters, what they said and how they said it that moved a story from FADE IN to FADE OUT.

And I saw myself, past, present and future in the film. I can’t even count the number of times I’ve been on those “walk and talk” dates like the one in Before Sunset. The conversation flows to family, beliefs, food, sex. I know men relate better side-by-side than they do face-to-face and maybe that’s why I’ve had such memorable moments talking to men. Kudos to Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy for their chemistry (and the script); natural, fluid. The way Jesse’d gaze at her adoringly and make self-deprecating jokes about sex in an attempt to flirt, let his intentions be known but also protect himself at the same time. That whole scenario is the perfect date for me. Spend time with me without the frills. Like Céline said in the film, everyone is different; every person has their own unique details. And no one can be replaced. I love being given the opportunity to find out what it is that makes you unique.

I could go on forever about all the things I loved about the movie, how I related to it. It resonated so vividly, how it made my desire to visit Paris even stronger, my desire to write, just… my desire.