I never enter competitions. I don’t play the lottery, I don’t play board games, I don’t play badminton or tennis or croquet, I don’t play poker, I don’t throw any hats into any rings, ever.

Until at the end of last year, the WGA announced they were holding a competition to win fellowships with TV showrunners. “That’s what I need!” I thought to myself. “This is what I want to do with the rest of my life, this is reason I moved my tiny family to the USA. But I can’t just keep selling things and hoping they get made, because that’s a 1 in 100 chance. I need to learn from a real live professional showrunner, to ask them advice on a writer-to-writer basis. I need this.”

Because that’s the strange thing about being a fledgling screenwriter. I have been doing it for three years now, more or less, since my fifth and (probably) final book was published. I sold a movie script to New Regency, a TV show to ABC network, I had two TV shows in development with WB and Universal last year, I just sold a spec called RELATIVITY to Universal with a blind deal, I’m pitching more shows and movies and doing everything you’re supposed to do… but nothing has been produced, and moreover, I don’t know ANY professional working screenwriters. None. Not one. Bizarre, right?

So I sent in a spec I wrote last year, FILTHY LIAR. (Basic premise: A cocky British illegal immigrant will do whatever it takes to stay, survive and prosper in NYC. Kind of an updated Vanity Fair, with shades of Holly Golightly.) I figured I might get an interview, might get through to the last 100, the last 30, the last 10… and I did.

In fact, I won. Best comedy.

I didn’t just win best comedy. Mine was – apparently – the only script to get a complete score. It’s a goddamn miracle, that’s what it is.

So ANYWAY there’s going to be a staged table read on May 25, here in NYC, professionally cast. If you’re in the city, and you’d like to come, click here! (And cross your fingers that this gets optioned and made into an actual show. Cross them TIGHT.)

Call me a geek. But I love me some Luc Besson.

Quick question: why is this movie named for a noxious sleep-inducing drug?

Somehow, I find myself drawn to angry femme rock these days. Why? Oh, I don’t know WHY DO YOU THINK THAT MIGHT BE HAVE YOU READ THE NEWS LATELY MOTHERFUCKINGCHRISTONABICYCLE.

I think that this song is probably waiting for a video:

Regardless, it’s great: I Can’t Stand You Anymore by Sleigh Bells.

Baby I Call Hell by Deap Vally.

Wednesday Night Melody by Bleached.

I Told You I’d Be With The Guys by Cherry Glazerr.

Another one with no video. Less loud, but still kind of angry: Seashore by Regrettes.

Raise Hell by Dorothy.

Got any more loud angry women songs for me, gang? (And by the way, thank you all for the podcast ideas – SO AWESOME. I truly appreciate them all and have them lined up on my phone, like little planes on a runway, waiting for takeoff.)

Let’s talk about podcasts, which fill a radio-shaped hole in my life (and man, I miss the radio, especially London’s XFM, which has music of the indie-rock persuasion, and was the soundtrack to my 20s).

I find storytelling podcasts confusing and boring (maybe because they haven’t been edited enough,  I’m a grumpy ol’ bitch). I feel ill even thinking about murder podcasts (do people who love brutal murder stories realize a person DIED, I wonder? The answer is obviously yes, but they don’t care. And then I think, as I do quite often when humanity disappoints, ‘well I guess that’s how 53% of white women voted for Trump’, because I am also a liberal ol’ bitch).

And I quickly get irritated with those educational podcasts. You know the kind I mean. Where endless factoids are rabbited at me by giggly insecure-yet-self-congratulatory-yet-probably-depressive geekboys, because it’s just mansplaining and I don’t fucking want to know anything they have to teach me, and did I mention I’m a grumpy ol’ bitch?

So here are the ones I do like:

Marc Maron’s WTF is basically the granddaddy of great podcast interviewers, and he was my first podcast love. At his best, he is thoughtful, self-deprecating, gentle, witty and human. At his worst, he’s ethnocentric, self-obsessed, bullies men he sees as weak and treats most women with either a benign patriarchal detachment or sexual combativeness. I nearly quit after the fiftieth time I heard him ask a dude “so is that when you discovered pussy?” as though women were all just running around at the age of 14 with our bodies cut off above the pudenda. But the Katie Couric interview really made me love him again, and he’s become increasingly thoughtful, open and wise over the years. So stick with Marc. He makes the world a better place.

Nerdist with Chris Hardwick is another very funny interview series. Gentler than Marc Maron, more funny small talk than an actual interview, and sometimes it makes me laugh out loud. I really love his sidekicks, Matt and Jonah. Start with the Tom Hanks interviews, wander over into the Andrea Savage one, and go from there. Nerdist has a genuine kindness, it always makes me smile. They could do with some more women on this podcast. Why not get Andrea Savage in every week?

If you love New York history (and who doesn’t?) The Bowery Boys is great. Well-written and fascinating. One of these guys has a voice very similar to the kid who played the brother’s friend in Adventures In Babysitting. Same guy was in Dazed And Confused and Rent. You know the guy I mean, right? Yeah, you know. I’m not going to look up his name because I’m CRAZY like that, and anyway, I prefer to think of the podcast guy as the brother’s friend from Adventures In Babysitting and I bet he prefers it, too. (Side note: I wish there was a dedicated podcast about the history of London, but I can’t find one. Anyone?)

Pod Save America. I know, Trumpxiety is real, and sometimes it seems like adding another reason to think about Trump is an impossible ask. But I am trying to look at this whole fucking nightmare as the prison in Shawshank Redemption. The only way for the average person to escape – and to mitigate the despair and anxiety we all feel now and again slash every fucking day - is one teaspoon at a time. So I have a #dailyactofresistance (go here and here and here or here or here and a million other places), I make five phone calls a day, I host postcard parties, I turn up for marches and protests, I donate money and I will continue to, and like that, we’ll get through this, one teaspoon at a time. And I listen to this podcast, because once I started, I immediately felt better about the world, and remembered that very very very very smart and good people are fighting too, and they have giant bulldozers to help my tiny teaspoon. Pod Save America bills itself as a ‘podcast for people not yet ready to give up or go insane’, and it’s hosted by Obama’s aides when he was in office - Jon Favreau, Jon Lovett, Dan Pfeiffer and Tommy Vietor. It’s extremely funny and smart. If I was single, I would date the shit out of those guys.

And now I am also listening to a new podcast, With Friends Like These, with Ana Marie Cox, which bills itself as “political columnist and culture critic, sits down with liberals and conservatives, pastors, writers, activists, and other people you should know for an open, funny, in-depth conversation about what divides us – a show about listening instead of arguing”. In just one post, it’s been pretty eye-opening, particularly for – as established – a grumpy liberal ol’ bitch like me. Check it out, it’s great.

Tell me your podcast favorites! I need more. Especially more women. Are there any podcasts with female interviewers AND music of the indie-rock persuasion? That is the question.

Is everyone watching The Detour?

Because it is HILWAITFORITARIOUS. Go watch it. Stop reading this and go watch it.

Outstanding posters here.

See you Saturday. Stay nasty. x

I read this, and decided to watch Sweet/Vicious, and GUYS, it’s GREAT.

It triggers a shitload of happy endorphins into my women-kicking-the-shit-out-of-bad-guys pleasure centres, and those centers haven’t seen much action since, what, Buffy? (Oh Buffy. How I loved thee.) And it’s funny and smart and sharp. I love it.

I dare you to watch this trailer without punching the air and yelling ‘FUCK YEAH!’ at the end.

See? You punched the air, right?

You can watch it on the MTV website, and why the heck wouldn’t you.

You guys, I just read the best book.

The Greatest Knight: The Remarkable Life Of William Marshal, the Power Behind Five English Thrones 

The title is the worst thing about this book, being both forgettably generic (I keep telling everyone about it, and I’m like “the best knight? The bestest knight? the darkest knight? Ugh I can’t remember, I’ll text it to you when I get home”) and way too long. That’s a fifteen word title, people. I mean come the fuck on. However, I’ve had too many titles forced on my little books to be that critical of anyone else’s title. What’s important is what’s inside.

And OH. What a lot of wonderful things are inside this book. I have never read anything about this period before, and this story – such a cliche to say ‘brings it to life’ – but I suddenly understand that people existed, truly viscerally existed, 800 years ago. Before this, my knowledge of Western European history, social and political, stopped at Henry VIII. I vaguely imagined that before him everyone lived in hovels and had hunchbacks and boils, there was the odd crusade, some Vikings popping up now and again for a spot of rape and pillage, Tristan and Isolde in a boat and then at some point before that, the Romans. But no. It would appear people were real in the 1100s, and just as romantic and hopeful and ambitious and wise and silly and desperately violent as they are now. And to feel like you truly know and understand a knight who died 800 years ago, well, that’s a sign of damn good writing. Twenty bucks says Ron Howard and Brian Glazer make it into a movie. Someone send it to them.