don't shoot

Yesterday after my screen writing class I went to a writer's group meeting. Some of us are really starting to gel as a group and the meetings are nice when it's just us.

But, for some reason riff raff always show up to spoil the fun. There's an older guy in our group who occasionally shows up who doesn't seem to have any comprehension of what he's read. He makes the weirdest suggestions. Like:

guy: In this sentence you say croco-diamonds don't show fear. And then a few paragraphs later you say he's afraid.
me: The point being he's afraid even though he doesn't show it.
guy: Really? Because I find that contradictory. How can you be afraid if you aren't showing it?

Ummmmm...What?

Then there's a new crazy woman who just joined the group. She's writing a book/porn piece about a woman who becomes the first Navy SEAL (endearingly, she wrote "Seal") and then proceeds to kill all of her ex-boyfriends (oh, also, the protagonist is an amazing race car driver - she races a Porsche - on a military salary - riiiight - and she travels in ME countries in a burka assassinating people - when I pointed out to her that women in burkas are not allowed to travel around alone in Saudi Arabia she was like "but it's a book" - guess she never heard the rule that an author can bend reality after gaining credibility with her audience - but if I say Denver is the capital of Utah most people won't read my book). Besides being factually insane her reading included a scene recounting oral sex (soon to be dead boyfriend going down on the female protagonist, with stilted and painful conversation following the scene with lines like "how did I taste?" - I'll spare you the rest because it was disgusting and poorly written).

Besides the disturbing topic of her book, she also said 3 times that she would like to assassinate Obama. I didn't say anything as I figured, based on her book, she didn't know jack shit about guns. I just ignored everything she said, including all her stupid comments to people who had their stuff read (to me she said "page numbers are your friends!" - what????).

And then the last reading of the meeting we read my friend Kev's screen play about a kid who finds out his mom was in playboy. The crazy woman flipped out. She said, based on Kev's target audience (boys 14 - 18) that she thought he was destroying the US's morality and that his screen play represented everything wrong with the US. And then she said "I may write porn, but I write it for adults" (note: the section of Kev's screen play that we read had a boner joke and a tampon joke - in these days, who would consider that porn?). I wanted to say "can you ensure your book won't get into the hands of a 14 year old boy?" but thought she was too stupid to argue with.

After her crazy tirade, and another threat from her to shoot the president, the group broke up. I hope she doesn't come back.