Wednesday, September 26, 2012

Long Shot:  typically shows the entire object or human figure and is usually intended to place it in some relation to its surroundings.


This is a term that a friend used to describe frequent schemes that had low odds of success.  The earliest use was back in 2003 (i think) when a writing partner and i, after multiple rejections of spec scripts we submitted to various film studios, decided to just make our own film.  At that time, a mutual friend of ours dubbed us "The Longshot Brothers" because we so often took chances on things.  This was coming off a stint of spontaneous one-way trips to Europe and across the US, and the aforementioned collection of spec material.
Over the years the concept of the long shot has endeared itself to me and the myriad permutations of the term have come to represent my outlook.  Despite the connotation that a long shot is something with little to no chance of winning, i think it is important to focus on the latter portion of that definition.  Maybe that's naive, or just plain dumb.  Or dumber.

*For the curious, that film was completed: Bad Service



i sat in front of the computer screen a few minutes ago staring at the blinking cursor in the space where you input the name of your soon-to-be blog.  Catchy names eluded me.  Concerns of pigeon-holing myself with a constrictive title focusing on one aspect of myself plagued me.  Self-conscious thoughts of what i wanted to represent dogged me.  Finally the idea came to me: The Long Shot.  The definition of the term, that readers first encounter here at the beginning of this post, spoke to me in a profound way.  i don't know for certain what will evolve from this project, but whatever it is, i hope that it shows me as a whole person and where i fit into my surroundings.

As a side note, i'll be continuing to use the lower-case "i" in reference to myself.  i can't tell you exactly when it was, but i have a fuzzy memory of learning about the usage of the letter in elementary school.  Used as a pronoun it is, of course, grammatically correct to capitalize it whereas other pronouns (like he or she) are left in the lower case.  i remember thinking to myself "that's weird," and ever since then i've stuck to using the lower case, even at the beginning of a sentence.  As something of a grammar nerd, but also someone who enjoys being a little different, i guess it's my way of thumbing my nose at the rules.  i know the correct way to use it, but i'm just not going to.  It's also worth noting that there is no known record of a definitive explanation for this capitalization practice.  So i'll leave you with a challenge: show me some definitive proof as to why it should be capitalized, and i'll seriously reconsider my conviction.

2 comments:

  1. i have no idea what's up with the white highlighting. i changed the template and in doing so that was applied. what's up with that?

    ReplyDelete
  2. wth...thought i fixed it, preview looked normal, save changes and it's still there. i'll get you, white highlighting!!

    ReplyDelete