“I’d love to be a judge on this episode of Iron Chef,”said Akemi. “The secret ingredient is heroin.”
“Heroin?”I asked. And here I’d thought they couldn’t get any more surprising than “battle scotch”.
“Heroin,”she repeated. And then enunciating just to be sure: “He-ro-in.”
Hunh. You think you know a person…
“The fish,”she added. “Like aji.”
“Herring?”I asked.
“Yes.”
“HerRING is a fish. HeRO-IN is a drug. HerRING and HeRO-IN. Not the same thing.”
“Well, they sound the same to me.”
Another one to file away for my upcoming book, Shit My Japanese Girlfriend Says, along with the many Akemi-isms I’ve been introduced to over the past three years. Like “punching sweet” as in “This candy is punching sweet!”. She threw that one out a little while ago and, hours later, when I declared something “punchy sweet” she shot me a mystified look and asked me what I meant. Apparently, the correct term is “punching sweet” and no variation is acceptable, much less comprehensible. This despite the fact that SHE MADE UP THE TERM! Still, like other Akemi-isms (ie. “melty sleepy”), it’s memorable and does kind of sort of make sense.
So, your mission, if you choose to accept it, is to start incorporating these Akemi-isms into daily conversation. Let’s start with these –
Punching sweet: Something so cloying it feels like you’re being punched with sweetness.
Melty sleepy: So sleepy you feel as though you’re melting.
Supa-mochi: Fabulous! Awesome! Fantastic!
Well, upon further consideration, I realize I’ve been going about it all wrong. I’ve been lucky in my career to date. I went from writing/story-editing animation straight into writing/producing teen sitcoms, then right into one hour action shows, then right onto Stargate where I spent the next 11+ years writing and producing. From Stargate, it was off to Toronto to work on that other show and then, from there, right back to Vancouver where Paul and I worked on the Delete miniseries and have since been developing pilots for several networks. It’s been a lot of fun and, in most instances, very fulfilling both creatively and financially, but the reality is that, at the end of the day, it’s not enough.
Now don’t get me wrong. Most of those productions afforded me an incredible amount of creative freedom. Still, given my line of work, I have a choice: I can be happy doing what I’m doing, working as a hired gun on other peoples’ shows, or, I can set up my own show. I would prefer the latter. And, as much as I’d love to do it in Vancouver, it has become increasingly obvious that if I’m going to take that next step, I’ll have to make the move to L.A.
Last year, I was out for dinner with a friend from L.A. who told me about a fellow who had been in a similar predicament. He’d done very well for himself back home but was gaining little traction in the U.S. market. So, he took his agent’s advice and moved to L.A. He went from being an enormously successful show runner to a staff writer-producer. Three years later, after working hard, making connections, and proving himself, he was an enormously successful show runner once again.
So that’s the plan. Leave Vancouver for L.A. so that I can set up my own show and move back and shoot it here in Vancouver.
Crazy, no?
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