Tuesday, November 20, 2018

Stories I've written, always meaning to send

 
  Let this be a lesson to some young person out there. If you have an idea, about anything, carry it through as far as you can. You will often stop at some point when you realize it's not going to work, but everyone has at least one good idea and it's a goddamned shame when you look up one day and find out someone else had the same idea and carried it through.
     Case in point. Tonight while watching television and ad come up for a new show scheduled to begin in January. It's called "Found Innocent." It gave me a cold chill.
    You see, I had this idea years ago, even wrote what's called a treatment for it. I have searched for that treatment but so far no luck. In it the main protagonist each episode took on the case of a person imprisoned and maintaining his innocence. Each prisoner would provide a different story, some of them actually innocent and others who were just where they were supposed to be.
     I found it. It's dated May 5, 2014, but it may have been updated on that date. I probably had been thinking about it long before that, Anyway, just because I can, this is what I had prepared: ( And for the sake of truth I am not going to make any corrections or changes at all. This is the way I left it in 2014)

INNOCENCE
BAsed in the cliche that everyone in prison says he's innocent and loosely based on the Innocence Project
 Main character former prosecuting attorney who learns he send a man to the chair who was innocent.  Now in private practice, he volunteers pro bono at a prison advising people in prison.  Nrried, young old girl friend  what?
He has a buddy in the police department.  They meet when the detetective forces his way into the office (most police don't like the lawyer)  and makes him very nervous.  Turns out the lawyer ahd been instrumental in proving the policeman's convicted brother was actually innocent and so he says a faver is owed. Lawyer takes liberal advantage of access to police files.
He has to have a secretary gatekeeper helper but this is cliche.  He could have a law grad student helpling with all the hyoung innocence'
Private detective.   This is going to be a woman, tough and capable who does investigations for the lawyer. There can be sexual tension here, but she over the long run pushes off any hint of  connection.
Detective's boss and colleagues don't like his connection with the lawyer and at times try to subvert him.
Head of  the firm:  Silver haired white guy who doesn't like all the pro bono work. )A thought here some civil case he forces on the lawyer turns out to be connected to one of his innocence cases.
Maybe need a nemisis prosecutor.
FIRST CASE
 ANOTHER MORE TIMELY STIMULUS:   A kid in jail for 20 years for having a pocketfull of pot.
 First case: Hard looking goth girl comes into his office.  Says her boy friend is innocent and he told her the lawuyers name becasue he heard it from someone in prison.  She explains the case but says they have no money and says her boyfriend told her to fuck the lawyer if she had to.  Looks:  a teardrop tattoo under one eye and that one with heavy goth makeup....  the other eye just shadowed like sunken zombie like. Nose ring, short straight dark hair.  fingerless gloves and sexy. And makes no bones about fucking the guy.
Prisoner, hard case biker gangster who is guilty of a lot but not the crime he was convicted of. not very likable  but that's part of the deal of the innocence project, if the person is not guilty he is not guilty no matter what kind of person he is.

The guy's crime: Seeing a biker gang fight.  Gun shots. A guy goes down.  Just then someone attempts to drive a pickup truck through the center of the fight scattering combatants in all directions. The prisoner sees a guy layng in the street and grabs the shoulders of his lether jacket and pulls him to safety, only in turning the guy over to learn he is not only dead,  he is wearing the jacket of the other gang. Our biker pulls th body into the bushes and hightails it not realizing he has dropped his knife by the body and picked up some blood on his own clothing.  By a circuitous route he makes it to his bike as he hears sirens. He atempts to get out of there but the street he heads down has cops coming at him.  He makes a quick turn into an alley. but his rear wheel hits a spot of oil and he skids out of control into the side of a building right in front of the comps and knocks himself out.  He wakes up in jail. The bllood on his coat, his knife by the body, and a witness who saw him dragging the bodyh away  are enoujgh to convict him. He gets 15-30 for second degree murder largel becasue of the prior arrests and convictions. mostly for assault but a couple of minor possession drug busts. His gang is supected of drug trafficking.
During the fight: whole bar erupts.  Spills out into the street. As it does a big guy grabs the girlfriend and drags her kicking out a side door into an alley.  There he slams her against a dumptster then throws her to the ground, holds her down and starts to tear off her jeans.  from her pocket she pulls a knife and stabs him in the stomach. and while he is still shocked she cuts him across his neck.  Then she is abel  to squirm out from under him and head away from the meless int he street down toward to opposite end of the alley.
In the street sirens and then police and the boyfriend runs and turns into thee ame alley to escape. when he is about halfway down the alley a car roars into the alley heading toward him.  He sees the victim laying there and runs, pulling him out of the way just as the car passes.  But, right behind the car comes a police car.  The police see the guy with the victim, come to a stop and jummp out to subdue the guy and put him under arrest.  
Meanwhile the gril has left the alley just before the first car, hides agains a wall is it also emerges and turns away from where she is hiding.  Once free of any observation, she makes her way down the street and into the darkness whil her boyfirend  is hauled off to the jail.
CHANGE THIS SLIGHTLY TO AVOID IDENTIFYING THE REAL KILLER.  During the fight a big tough guy drags the girl out of the bar by a back door opening into the alley.  Minutes later the boyfriend/convicted runs into the alley to escape police. He sees another figure farther donw the alley running away. He starts to follow mostly for his own escape but trips over  the guy. A car screetches into the alley chased by police. The figure disappears at the end of the alley in the same shot where the biker is pulling the victim out of the ay of the car. The car roars past followed by a police care which sotps when they see the biker with the body.
Now how do they prove him innocent.             
1  did they check his knife for blood
2. attack the witness...  did he actually see the guy stab the victim   no  only dragging him away
3. forensices:  blood on his jackt is it the kind of spatter that would come frtom stabbing someone?  No only dragging and turning over. Knife found by body, too bloody from neck wound, no prints, blood washed away.   Might somewhere find an odd print of partial finger but cut off evenly.  Like made from fingerless gloves like got girl was wearing.  Looking at one print taken.middle and lower sections of finger but no tip print.
4.  Depth of stab wounds,    neck wound is shallow but evidence knife was twisted while in the wound.
5. Investigation centers on identification of the mystery person in the alley.  Interview people in the fight. Did anyone see anyone go out the back door?  Identifiable. Bartender might have seen (a man and a woman leaving) Later admits, man was forcing woman out the door.
SOULUTION
Turns out she did it. WEaker knife wouldnds plus a gun shot from a small weapon.
 WRITING PROMPTS
What are protagonist's top five monthly expenses
 So that's it. Obviously not a finished, polished treatment, but you get the idea. So, now as I anticipate a television show coming up in January all I can say is godammit!  At least I can hope I will be at the East Pole and unable to watch it. And I can hope some young writer will be encouraged to believe in his work and follow it through. At times like this I recall something overheard near a harbor one day. A woman owned a restaurant one step up from a food truck. By herself she was digging a trench to run a water line from a nearby building to her restaurant. As she worked several men stopped to watch for a minute or two. When one of them shouted a wise crack she hollered back: "You can pick up a shovel, you know. Nothing's stopping you but fear."
Nothing stopping any of us but fear. Go for it.
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Memorable quotations

The best way to know you are having an adventure is when you wish you were home talking about it." — a mechanic on the Alaska State Ferry System. Or as in my own case planning how I will be writing it on this blog.

"You can't promote principled anti-corruption without pissing off corrupt people." — George Kent

"If only the British had held on to the airports, the whole thing might have gone differently for us." — Mick Jagger

"You can do anything as long as you don't scare the horses." — a mother's favorite saying recalled by a friend

A poem is an egg with a horse inside” — anonymous fourth grader

“My children will likely turn my picture to the wall but what the hell, you only get old once." — Joe May

“Always do sober what you said you'd do drunk. That will teach you to keep your mouth shut.” — Ernest Hemingway

When I write, I feel like an armless, legless man with a crayon in his mouth.― Kurt Vonnegut

“If you wrote something for which someone sent you a cheque, if you cashed the cheque and it didn't bounce, and if you then paid the light bill with the money, I consider you talented.”―Stephen King

The thing about ignorance is, you don't have to remain ignorant. — me again"

"It was like the aftermath of an orgasm with the wrong partner." – David Lagercrants “The Girl in the Spider’s Web.”

Why worry about dying, you aren't going to live to regret it.

Never debate with someone who gets ink by the barrel" — George Hayes, former Alaska Attorney General who died recently

My dear Mr. Frost: two roads never diverge in a yellow wood. Three roads meet there. — @Shakespeare on Twitter

Normal is how somebody else thinks you should act.

"The mark of a great shiphandler is never getting into situations that require great shiphandling," Adm. Ernest King, USN

Me: Does the restaurant have cute waitresses?

My friend Gail: All waitresses are cute when you're hungry.

I'm not a writer, but sometimes I push around words to see what happens. – Scott Berry

I realized today how many of my stories start out "years ago." What's next? Once upon a time?"

“The rivers of Alaska are strewn with the bones of men who made but one mistake” - Fred McGarry, a Nushagak Trapper

Many people hear voices when no one is there. Some of them are called mad and are shut up in rooms where they stared at walls all day. Others are called writers and they do pretty much the same thing. – Meg Chittenden

A non-writing writer is a monster courting insanity. – Franz Kafka

We are all immortal until the one day we are not. – me again

If the muse is late, start without her – Peter S. Beagle

Substitute ‘damn’ every time you’re inclined to write ‘very;’ your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be. ~Mark Twain Actually you could do the same thing with the word "really" as in "really cold."

If you are looking for an experience that will temper your vanity, this is it. There's no one to impress when you're alone on the trap line. – Michael Carey quoting his father's journal

Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing. – Benjamin Franklin

It’s nervous work. The state you need to write in is the state that others are paying large sums of money to get rid of. – Shirley Hazzard

So far as I can remember, there is not one word in the Gospels in praise of intelligence -- Bertrand Russell

You know that I always just wanted to have a small ship to take stuff from a place that had a lot of that stuff to a place that did not have a lot of that stuff and so prosper.—Jackie Faber, “The Wake of the Lorelei Lee”

If you attack the arguer instead of the argument, you lose both

If an insurance company won’t pay for damages caused by an “act of God,” shouldn’t it then have to prove the existence of God? – I said that

I used to think getting old was about vanity—but actually it’s about losing people you love. Getting wrinkles is trivial. – Eugene O’Neill

German General to Swiss General: “You have only 500,000 men in your army; what would you do if I invaded with 1 million men?”

Swiss General: “Well, I suppose every one of my soldiers would need to fire twice.”

Writing is the only thing that when I do it, I don’t feel I should be doing something else.—Gloria Steinem

Exceed your bandwidth—sign on the wall of the maintenance shop at the West Coast/Alaska Tsunami Warning Center

One thing I do know, if you keep at it, you usually wind up getting something done.—Patricia Monaghan

Do you want to know what kind of person makes the best reporter? I’ll tell you. A borderline sociopath. Someone smart, inquisitive, stubborn, disorganized, chaotic, and in a perpetual state of simmering rage at the failings of the world.—Brett Arends

It is a very simple mind that only knows how to spell a word one way.—Andrew Jackson

3:30 is too late or too early to do anything—Rene Descartes

Everything is okay when it’s 50-below as long as everything is okay. – an Alaskan in Tom Walker’s “The Seventymile Kid”

You can have your own opinion but you can’t have your own science.—commenter arguing on a story about polar bears and global warming

He looks at three ex wives as a good start—TV police drama

Talkeetna: A friendly little drinking town with a climbing problem.—a handmade bumper sticker

“You’re either into the wall or into the show”—Marco Andretti on giving it all to qualify last at the 2011 Indy 500

Makeup is not for the faint of heart—the makeup guerrilla

“I’m going to relax in a very adult manner.”—Danica Patrick after sweating it out and qualifying half an hour before Andretti

“Asking Congress to come back is like asking a mugger to come back because he forgot your wallet.”—a roundtable participant on Fox of all places

As Republicans go further back in the conception process to define when life actually begins, I am beginning to think the eventual definition will be life begins in the beer I was drinking when I met her.—me again

Hunting is a “critical element for the long-term conservation of wood bison.”—a state department of Fish and Game official explaining why the state would not go along with a federal plan to reintroduce wood bison in Alaska because the agreement did not specifically allow hunting

Each day do something that won’t compute – anon

I can’t belive I still have to protest this shit – a sign carriend by an elderly woman at an Occupy demonstration

Life should be a little nuts or else it’s just a bunch of Thursdays strung together—Kevin Costner as Beau Burroughs in “Rumor has it”

You’re just a wanker whipping up fear —Irish President Michael D. Higgins to a tea party radio announcer

Being president doesn’t change who you are; it reveals who you are—Michelle Obama

Sports malaprops

Commenting on an athlete with hearing impairment he said the player didn’t show any “uncomfortability.” “He's not doing things he can't do."

"… there's a fearlessment about him …"

"He's got to have the lead if he's going to win this race." "

"Kansas has always had the ability to score with the basketball."

"NFL to put computer chips in balls." Oh, that's gotta hurt.

"Now that you're in the finals you have to run the race that's going to get you on the podium."

"It's very important for both sides that they stay on their feet."

This is why you get to hate sportscasters. Kansas beats Texas for the first time since 1938. So the pundits open their segment with the question "let's talk about what went wrong." Wrong? Kansas WON a football game! That's what went RIGHT!

"I brought out the thermostat to show you how cold it is here." Points to a thermometer reading zero in Minneapolis.

"It's tough to win on the road when you turn the ball over." Oh, really? Like you can do all right if you turn the ball over playing at home?

Cliches so embedded in sportscasters' minds they can't help themselves: "Minnesota fell from the ranks of the undefeated today." What ranks? They were the only undefeated team left.

A good one: A 5'10" player went up and caught a pass off a defensive back over six feet tall. The quote? "He's got some hops."

Best homonym of the day so far: "It's all tied. Alabama 34, Kentucky 3." Oh, Tide.

"Steve Hooker commentates on his Olympic pole vault gold medal." When "comments" just won't do.

"He's certainly capable of the top ten, maybe even higher than that."

"Atlanta is capable of doing what they're doing."

"Biyombo, one of seven kids from the Republic of Congo." In the NBA? In America? In his whole country?

"You can't come out and be aggressive but you can't come out and be unaggressive."

"They're gonna be in every game they play!"

"First you have to get two strikes on the hitter before you get the strikeout."

"The game ended in the final seconds." You have to wonder when the others ended or are they still going on?

How is a team down by one touchdown before the half "totally demoralized?"

"If they score runs they will win."

"I think the matchup is what it is"

After a play a Houston defender was on his knees, his head on the ground and his hand underneath him appeared to clutch a very sensitive part of the male anatomy. He rolled onto his back and quickly removed his hand. (Remember the old Cosby routine "you cannot touch certain parts of your body?") Finally they helped the guy to the sideline and then the replay was shown. In it the guy clearly took a hard knee between his thighs. As this was being shown, one of the announcers says, "It looks like he hurt his shoulder." The other agrees and then they both talk about how serious a shoulder injury can be. Were we watching the same game?

"Somebody is going to be the quarterback or we're going to see a new quarterback."

"That was a playmaker making a play.”