Clip Girl and Killing my Darlings

First of all, my Shakespeare Film Festival project is coming along swimmingly. However, IT'S TOO LONG. I knew it probably would be, but I love everything Aaronn and Katie have done so far and it's so hard to, what the industry says, "kill my darlings". I HAVE to cut stuff out, but it's almost painful :( I might make a "director's cut" that is longer than 3 minutes. I'm re-shooting the middle scene so it's shorter, but even so. It makes me cry inside.

Clip Girl (my sister) is home. It's nice and really anxiety-inducing at the same time. I yelled at her to take her Adderall because she was bouncing off the walls. But I always miss her so it's a conflicting situation, haha.

Why I Call My Sister "Clip Girl"

by Janelle

Once upon a time, there were two girls who attended a quaint little school in a quaint little town in a state with a currently deplorable economy. These two sisters were as different as can be. The eldest and more beautiful and intelligent of the two, we shall call her Janelle, had long flowing blonde hair she let fall loosely over her shoulders. The younger, less beautiful, less intelligent, more OCD child, we shall call her Nicole, had short brown hair she insisted on wearing in a ponytail.

The problem was that OCD Nicole could not have any "bumps" in her hair. Her hair had to be smoothed perfectly back with nary a hair out of place. The mother, a wise and patient woman, tried several solutions, such as hair gel and Aqua Net. One day, the mother introduced a novel concept called "barrettes". The mother would simply place a barrette over the bump, which in turn created another bump behind it. As long as her entire head was covered in barrettes, Nicole was completely satisfied with her bumpless hair.

The barrettes had an advantage; they created a built-in helmet for Nicole, so she was safe on the playground from rogue basketballs and jump ropes. She bobbed along in relative tranquility for a few weeks, until The Day to End the Peace occurred.

Janelle and Nicole were involved in a bitter argument before school one day. Janelle had eaten the last PopTart. Nicole had called dibs on this PopTart the night before. Chaos ensued. The girls hurled insults at each other until finally, Janelle let out the be-all end-all of insults.

Janelle cried, "Everybody at school calls you Clip Girl!"

Nicole's face crumpled in despair. The mother looked at Janelle with a sad, disappointed look; her peace had been forever disrupted.

Now you know. My mom to this day has never forgiven me for that. So in the last three years or so, I have begun to call her Clip Girl again for nostalgic purposes.

Sister bonding time.

So I interviewed my mom and my sister for my TV writing project.  I don't think I've laughed that hard in a long time.  The whole thing is about my sister's struggle with ADHD -- she wasn't diagnosed until she was 14, but she has clearly had it her whole life.  Nikki just recently started talking about it; she was very sensitive about the issue until about a year ago.

I recorded the interviews on GarageBand so I could go back and transcribe them later.  However, my sister wants me to convert hers to an mp3 file so she can put it on her myspace!  It's that funny.  We weren't even trying to be funny, and she did answer the questions honestly and I got a great interview, but we couldn't stop laughing!  She would say something kind of depressing, but then we would both crack up for no reason.  We sound pretty heartless, but for some reason the whole thing was hilarious.  It didn't help that we were literally lying in a bed in our pajamas, so it was extremely informal.

My mom's interview was a bit more serious -- we were at the kitchen table while she was eating lunch.  She still cracked jokes and we laughed, my family is kind of incapable of being serious, but my mom is probably the most serious out of all of us, so she gave some really great responses.

It was really nice to sit down and talk with them about something that has affected our whole family for so long.  Most of the time we are a let's-just-not-talk-about-it-maybe-it-will-go-away family, so it cleared the air a bit!