I don’t think I like weekends much anymore. It used to be that I just treated them like any other day, reasoning that a guy like me has no set work schedule and certainly does not only work from Monday to Friday, but over the past year that line of reasoning has been less than effective. I’ve been making no effort to write on the weekends, instead doing yoga and going to the beach and movies and hanging out; anything to not be in my apartment at my desk. The problem is I rarely think ahead far enough to make “plans for the weekend” (as in “Hey, Amyn, what are your plans for the weekend?” “Uh… I don’t know.”), so I often do find myself at home unexpectedly, staring at my desk and wondering if I should do some work or find something else to do.

This was one of those weekends. As usual, I didn’t expect it to be so boring. In fact, I had a number of possible events to attend (really, I did), but none of them were that appealing. So I bummed around. Went to yard sales and bought an office chair for ten bucks (upon which I am now sitting). Met with my composer. Took a nap by the pool. Went on a long walk up the beach to Santa Monica to hear a concert that was over by the time I got there. Watched football. Okay, so maybe that doesn’t sound that boring a weekend, but it was.

There was one thing that seemed odd to me. When we last left off in blog-land, I had written briefly about a blind date I had gone on, and how we had a nice time and I was quite certain we would hang out again in the near future. Based on those assumptions, I called the young lady on Friday, with the intention that we could perhaps hang out at some point on the weekend and catch that aforementioned movie. But as Friday turned to Saturday and Saturday turned to Sunday, the phone was surprisingly quiet. I was not overly concerned, but it did strike me as odd. Until… I remembered this “blog”! And how I had joked about the fact I was “not desperate because I had cable.” And it occurred to me that maybe, just maybe, this young lady had “googled” me and discovered this column. And read it. And decided I was a jerk. Is that possible? It never occurred to me that anyone would look me up and find this column, but sure enough, when I “self-googled” there it was, the third listing. So she probably read it. Man, have things become complicated in this technological age. I thought “caller ID” was making things tough, but the Web, that’s taking things to a whole other level.

Or did she just have one of those busy weekends women have sometimes when they just can’t find time to call someone back, which we guys know is just their way of playing hard to get.

Or is this perhaps my karma coming back to bite me in the ass. Because I have definitely “googled” prospective dates, with the hopes of gleaning some background info or maybe a photo or two. And now it’s happened to me. Hmmm… time will tell, I suppose.

But enough about that. This column is supposed to be about a screenwriter in LA, not some neurotic bachelor. (Or maybe those are one and the same). But the fact that I was bored this weekend and did not manage to write is related to screenwriting. Mainly the fact that I am really struggling with the ending to my new script. In the final scene, the main character, aptly named “Amir”, finds himself at a wedding on the dance floor with the woman who broke his heart ten years before. Amir has spent the last decade serial dating and living a cold, lonely life with a terrible job, but now he has proven, to himself and to his friends, that he is ready for love. That he can love again. And now this woman is in his arms, and it feels so… stupid. Corny. Contrived. She says they were young before and didn’t know what they wanted. That he was a boy and now she can see him as a man. Bla bla bla. He says he’s quitting his terrible job. She says that’s a good idea. And then they kiss and the movie’s over. (Now that I’m writing this it sounds like this script is pretty bad, which I don’t think it is, but the ending just doesn’t feel right and so I’m being extra-negative, I suppose). It’s a romantic comedy and we are going to want these two together at the end, but there’s gotta be a better way to do it. Anyway, I’m stuck, which is rare for me, and I don’t like it one bit. I gotta figure this damn thing out.

Will Amir say the right thing and end up with the girl from his past?
Will Amyn learn whether or not his blind date read this blog and never wants to talk to him again?

The suspense builds. Maybe by the next blog I’ll know the answer to at least one of these questions.