Holiday Greetings From the ROK

Hello everyone. I just have a couple of seconds to post these pictures from the Korean portion of holiday travel. It was cool to revisit my old town of Pusan although I didn't manage to connect with any of my old friends. Korea is very cold in the winter. I nearly forgot.

Strange Human Behavior

People who press on an illuminated button (elevator, crosswalk, etc) over and over and over, incessantly, as if that will cause the anticipated event to occur sooner.

People who get visibly and audibly irritated when the person directly in front of them in a long line (at the bank, at the airport) leaves a three- or four-foot gap between them and person in front of them. The actual number in the queue hasn’t changed—there are still the same amount of clicks from the front of the line—but this gap fills the hindmost person with rage. It destroys their illusion of forward movement, and amplifies the non-relationship between physical proximity and one’s position in line. Grrr.

People who think that supermarket parking lots are large square versions of Bourbon Street, where one can loaf around wherever they want, with impunity, while large vehicles with crushing power wait patiently for them to clear out of the way. Parking lots are for pedestrians, these people think, until they get in their cars and swear at the loafers shoving their shopping carts right down the center of things. Somehow they fail to make the connection.

People who eat entire boxes of Dr. Write's homemade cookies in a twelve-hour span. They were lovely and now they are gone. Those caramel chocolate chunk bar things were the devil's business...I love the neat box and the cute packaging too, well done!

Sometimes I Enjoy My Job Very Much

Here are some pictures from the roof of the Bonaventure Hotel downtown (4th between Flower and Fig). We were thirty-six stories up, doing time lapse for a Japanese Mazda commerical. You could see all the way to the Vincent Thomas bridge in San Pedro.

Snow Day

Middlebrow called yesterday morning when I was in the throes of pre-work dread. Although I often hate my job I never really experience pre-work dread like I used to when teaching or working at the video store or working as a waiter or administrative assistant or whatever. There isn’t that whole before-work-winding-up and after-work-cooling-down time to get the resentment up—it’s just a bunch of work from the moment you wake up to the moment you pass out. You learn to accept your fate.

I came out to do two days of B-camera on a Super Bowl car commercial and the director, a typically boorish, buffoonish ass, was operating my camera. He didn’t seem that talented—rumor is that he has a brilliant editor—but he clearly enjoys the role and will bully any and everyone he views as being beneath him. It’s laughable because in a situation like that the high-profile director is actually the most expendable person on the shoot. The client hires the ad agency, the ad agency hires the production company, the production company hires the director, the director hires the cinematographer, and the cinematographer hires much of the crew. The agency has the concept and most of the shots all storyboarded out, so even if the director didn’t exist (particularly this one), the commercial would still make itself. You shoot the product from an infinite number of angles and then the brilliant editor cuts it together and they buy the rights to some Led Zeppelin cue and whammo, you have your commercial. It’s not hard. But this guy was going to be a dick and I had to be next to it and receive some of it, so there you go I was seven years old again and back on the playground.

So I went to work, already prepped for a little abuse, but when I arrived it was discovered that there had been a mixup and I wasn’t supposed to be on for the last day of the commercial. Hooray! Of course Production tried to imply that it was a camera department blunder and didn’t want to pay me, but it was their fault so I worked out a deal with them and they paid me cash and I walked out of the airplane hanger and into the wonderful 80-degree sunshine of my snow day.

There was a rebroadcast of an old This American Life last week about a guy who decides to live his life as though he only has six months to live. Eventually, he becomes convinced that he will cease to exist at that point in the future, so he goes about, making preparations and tying up loose ends. He begins to wonder what he wants to do with his remaining time and is surprised to discover that he doesn’t want to climb Mt. Everest or go scuba diving in Belize. He wants to do the ordinary stuff. He wants to hang with his parents and work on the deck or wash dishes or take out the trash.

This is how I felt yesterday. Every little ordinary thing that I did was charged with life. I went to a café and put on my iPod and drank coffee and studied a little Korean and wrote out some New Years goals. And I had the best time doing this. I went bowling with my friend Jimmy. I did a little reading. I ate some hot and sour soup. I got a bottle of wine and watched Minority Report. I fell asleep on the couch. Ordinarily, this would be an unspectacular day off, but on this—my snow day—it was very very sweet. Delicious almost.

The Humiliation of Home Movies

My friend and I have put together a couple of short films documenting our road trips over the last couple of years. The first was something I did when he drove me from NYC to Boston in March 2004. K just finished the newest, a film about our drive from NYC to New Orleans earlier this year.

As many times as I have seen myself on camera, it always astonishes me how strange I look and behave. I suppose this is natural; people are often faked out by the way they perceive themselves and the way they actually appear on film. I am totally bizarre...I look tired, with big black bags under my eyes, and I have no chin, just a line of flesh from my lower mouth to my clavicle. I mouth breathe a lot and when I talk my two upper incisors feature prominently, like a chipmunk. My lips move strangely and I grimace by default. I punctuate my sentences with "uhhhhhhs" and my voice sounds simultaneously deep and nasal somehow. I come off as someone with an IQ pushing 100.

This is not the way I see myself at all, but film doesn't lie.

It would be interesting to harness modern technology to find out what people think their voices sound like in their heads. It would be fairly easy to record them talking and let them manipulate the pitch and resonance, etc...until it sounds like voice they THINK they have. The same could go for appearances...let people computer modify their photos to show how they think they look. I would love to hear what Mid-B thinks his voice sounds like.

Furthermore, why does everyone get discouraged when they see what they actually look and behave like? why is it always a harrowing experience? Why aren't there some people who have low self-esteem and then they look at pictures of themselves and say, "Whoa, I'm totally attractive!"? Why doesn't it work in this direction?

I guess it does, actually, even though it's very abnormal. These people are called actors, and they have a whole other set of problems.

Post-Noveling Analysis

I wrote 5,000 words today and finished the novel. It was an arduous grind but it is all over. I finished two days late but I wrote long, ending up w/ 64,000 words (228 pages).

There were three goals:
1. To finish
2. To create a literary thriller where no one dies and where no weapons exist
3. To cram all of the story beats into a plotty 50,000 words, so that the expansion to 100,000 would still retain a rigorous plot in spite of digressions, meditation, and writerly wheelie-poppin

The MS steals from a bunch of different things, most notably "The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time" and 'Red Harvest."

It centers around the famous 1940 Narrows Bridge collapse in Tacoma, Washington. The protagonist, an agoraphobic nineteen-year-old man beset by a lifetime of weather-related tragedies, discovers a mystery in it. He must engage with the scary outer world if he is to solve the deal and finally grow up.

It will be called "Strange Weather."

This writing experiment was really awful, but also kind of fun too. Since this was my first time to ever work on a novel (let alone one written at breakneck speed), it was interesting to see how sleep, diet, exercise, caffeine infusions, and scheduling affected productivity and quality. I found that I became superstitious, like a sportsman, to the point where I had a hard time writing at all if I had the wrong kind of coffee or the wrong music on or if I tried to write in the middle of the day.

I never did quite shake that feeling of pointless, though. Like what a waste of time this is. Playing make-believe. Inventing plots and schemes. Why? I mean, it's kind of fun but I have a hard time taking it seriously. It's hard to think that a book could actually make a difference in the world. Especially a novel.

I will come back to this MS later but I don't want to spend more than a couple of months on it. I think about all of the other things I could be doing with my life, like watching good movies or cooking more or going on dates or taking swimming lessons or hiking or resuming study of Japanese, Korean, Chinese, and Spanish. Anything really seems more important right now.

Tomorrow we shall start the Coffee Reduction Act.

Rejection!

Well, I finally got word from Sundance, who sent me a very nice form rejection over the email. "There were many more worthy entries than we could program" and so forth. "I hope that you will give the festival the same consideration in the future." Slamdance is also not looking so good as I have some friends who have gotten in and were notified a week ago or so. I havent' heard a peep.

Next rejections will be from:

1. South by Southwest
2. San Francisco International Film Festival
3. Tribeca Film Festival

But hey, it's cool, the sun don't rise and set on the Park City Festivals. Fuck those guys. I don't need an excuse to visit the SLC.

Besides, i'm going to use this time to retool the first 20 minutes of the movie (which needs retooling). I must take into account the viewer of the screener casette. I worked for the New Orleans Film Festival one year and I remember what it was like to plow through entries. It isn't fair, but a movie had to grab me in a couple of minutes or I would veg out and eject it after ten. Sorry.

So the opening may change. I am trying to incorporate a chase scene out of stock footage, but hey, I just dunno. Perhaps a fistfight or some lovemaking like the opening scene of Betty Blue. Or monsters. Scary monsters.

100th Blog Posting Celebration (featuring Kicking Bear, Lil Kim, & Ludacris)

To celebrate the 100th blog posting at the Front Porch (you people thought it would never last), I'm starting a new feature: the guest blogger.

My father, Kicking Bear, has no interest in starting a blog, maintaining a blog, then losing interest and quitting said blog. This is a one-off. He wants the high-profile Front Porch webspace. He wants the built-in, highly esteemed Front Porch readership. He wants blogging without commitments. He wants it all.

So without further ado, here is my father, Kicking Bear, and his contribution to the Front Porch on this very special day.


Kicking Bear's Frustrations

Have you ever purchased a piece of clothing (shirts, coats, or anything else) that you really like, and when it wears out three, four, five or more years later, you would like to replace it with the exact same thing? Have you ever been able to do that? I haven't. Not once in 50+ years. You find something you really like and then that's a signal for it to disappear from the universe. Other favorite products that have disappeared or are extremely difficult to find:

1) Sanka Coffee
2) A&W Diet Creme Soda
3) Crispy M&Ms
4) Louis Rich Turkey Salami
5) Care-Free Gum
6) 0.9mm Pentil Pencils
7) Donkey Kong Cereal

There's been several others that have long been forgotten.

Your friend,

Kicking Bear

Big Papa's Thanksgiving

So I made the drive down to Calexico late Wednesday, shelled out $100 to stay at a Holiday Inn Express (urp!) and crossed through the very porous border into Mexicali at 7am Thanksgiving. I love the expression "porous border"; it fits together well, like "hapless congressman" and "unbelievable hubris." When I say porous, I am not kidding: There wasn't anyone there. There was one guy standing around, who may have worked for the border patrol and two of those jailhouse revolving doors thingamabobs made with interlacing metal posts (like in the NYC subway). After that, no immigracion, nothin' baby...I have no tourist card, nothing, nobody knows I'm here....Of course coming back to the US the border presence is larger, but about one-tenth the size of TJ. For anyone who wants to sneak into Mexico (for whatever reason), do it in Mexicali/Calexico.


I turned down Mid-B's offer of Idaho Gluttony and decided to bus down to San Felipe for four days of noveling. San Felipe was probably pretty cool about ten years ago, when it was just a sleepy fishing village w/ a small expat community. Now the shadow of spring break looms large, with high-priced accomodations and clubs with names like "Rockodile" and "Boom Boom."

Mid-B said this trip was Hemingwayesque, but there really is nothing that romantic about it. Ideally, I'd go further into Mexico (mexico is huge, yes!) to the DF or Yucatan or anywhere but here. In a strange inversion, my corner in LA is more authentically Mexican than San Felipe, and San Felipe is more "American" than LA.

No, Big Papa would be disappointed. In a similar vein, one of my favorite quotes is from John Huston, who was lecturing at a film school when queried by a student:

Student: "Wouldn't you say, Mr. Huston, that in the first act you establish your characters, in the second act you develop---"
Huston: "You know what? You need to get yourself down to Mexico and get some whores."

Now all you literal-minded Moms can just chill out b/c E is not getting any whores. Relax. Eric is noveling and watching white trash SoCal folks drink their Coronas at 10 in the morning and say things like, "Lead on, Poncho!"

Here is a quick summary of things:

1. The porous border
2. The Mr.T sticker trimmed perfectly to fit a soap dispenser in some bathroom.
3. Bootleg "charlie & the Chocolate Factory" on the bus, pan and scan dubbed in Spanish, the 3rd major release ruined in Spanish-speaking countries (Spiderman in Lima, X-Men in Guatemala).
4. Dollars preferred over pesos in Baja.
5. Federales.
6. ATVs up the wazoo.
7. Trinkets up the wazoo.
8. Margaritas up the wazoo.
9. Smell of petrol.
10. Dirtyish beach.
11. Cool lighthouse.
12. Dead laptop battery :(
13. ATVs up the wazoo.
14. English everywhere.
15. RV parks.
16. Tents on the beach.
17. Sullen locals.
18. Suave locals.
19. Political say-what-you-want-to-hear locals.
20. ATVs up the wazoo.
21. Find my gourmet coffee place (yippee!)
22. Find my unpopular with tourists taco stand
23. Find my internet cafe.
24. Find my stride.
25. Americans who insist on trying to speak Spanish to waiters and bartenders that are fluent in English: "Dos beef, dos shrimp. Uno milk."
26. Youngish waitress uncomprehendingly wearing a T-shirt with the number 69 on it.
27. ATVs up the wazoo.

In the end I had my Thanksgiving dinner at the taco stand, where I consumed seven carne asada tacos and four Dos Equis. Big Papa would be proud. I had strange dreams. This was definitely a good idea.

The Story of the Bo Tree

Once there was a prince who was confused about the world so he sat under a beautiful bo tree and fasted and had visions and many storms and things came after him but the snake god wrapped itself around the prince and protected him and when it was all over he knew that partying all the time was a nowhere road but so was staying in your apartment all the time and just working on projects. The key to enlightenment was being mediocre and balanced and nonextreme. He also said that life is pain and that pain is caused by the frustration of desire and they key to eliminating pain is to eliminate desire. He was a smart man.

This is a picture of the bo tree in Bodhgaya, India under which he found enlightenment (at least they say it's the same tree). Note the monks doing pushups:



This is a picture of a 27-year-old Sleepy E, back when he did stuff. E is the palefaced, very unenlightened lummox on the left:



This is a random picture of E at the Taj Mahal:



Even though there is a Vietnamese monastery directly across the street from my apartment building, it took me an entire year to discover this fact. Mainly it was because of big beautiful bo tree that concealed the templesque trappings and statues. I think a bo tree is technically a ficus, but I'm not sure what the exact make and model of it is. This is a picture of the monastery around the time Mid-B was here in May. You can see the bo tree encroaching in on the top left of frame:



This is the picture of the bo tree as about a week ago:



I came out one day and two guys were up on ladders chainsawing the thing up. I went over and asked what was going on and they claimed that the monestary called them out to do some "pruning." My guess is that the neighbors were complaining about the reach of the beautiful tree and the city was ordering them to contain it. So they brought in these guys to hack the s*** out of it. But this was delicate pruning, I hate to see the alternative.

"This is terrible!" I said. "Look at it, my God!"

"It'll grow back in about a year."

A few days later I was out taking pictures for the blog and a bald middle-aged monkstress came out to see what I was doing.

"They cut down the bo tree!" I said.

"No," said the woman.

I made furious cutting motions with my index and middle fingers. "The bo tree! They cut it."

"No," she said apologetically.

Maybe she thought I was trying sell her on the idea of some more pruning. I smiled and said goodbye and went back to my apartment to work on a novel with make-believe events in it.

Writing (and Notwriting) in Restaurants

The worst is the Insomnia Cafe on Beverly. Once you enter, two dozen wannabe screenwriter poseurs look up from their laptops to check you out, and to check you out checking them out. I hate this place. I hate the idea of writing in cafes. It is bullshit. Any real writer knows that you can't get anything done writing in a cafe--real work is done in your office or at home where you can hammer down without distraction for hours on end. A writer writes in solitude. A poseur notwrites in a cafe, the Insomnia cafe, where he can observe other stylish wannabees notwriting.

Of course this is all to say that I've been writing in cafes a lot lately. It's productive and not; it seems good for a particular kind of brainstorming or freewriting but not very good for the task of noveling. But I keep getting drawn back to the cafe even though it kills me to be one of the writing-for-show hordes. I never get nothing done (like sometimes at home) and I never get a lot done (like sometimes at home)--it's always a little trickle of good stuff. Plus it's just good to get out of the house sometimes.

But I fear I am becoming one of them. When I was in Cambridge I went into a bar at about midnight, plopped my laptop onto the bar, ordered a black and tan, put my headphones on, and went to work. The old Irish barkeep sniffed at my drink order and sniffed at me, who must of looked like the biggest westcoast poser in all of Massachusetts.

50 Necessary Ingredients For A Rap Video Shoot

1. Blunts
2. Beer
3. Hot pants
4. Hoochie mamas
5. Bling
6. Do-rags
7. Swisher Sweets
8. A humongous posse
9. Security
10. Gang signs
11. Sleazy producers
12. Cutaways of characters counting thousands of dollars of REAL money (not stage money)
13. Gold chains
14. Big flashy rings
15. Sean John apparel
16. Timberlands
17. Pierced navels
18. Pimps n Hoes
19. Self-perpetuating stereotypes
20. Hangers-on who bark at the poor Latino caterers
21. Self-important glam squad
22. Flat irons
23. Grindy stripperish dancing w/ mouths slightly ajar
24. Hustlerish approximations of eroticism
25. The big fat loud guy who thinks he's Cedric the Entertainer
26. Depressed camera crew
27. Absolute disorganization
28. Rappers who think they should be able to direct too
29. Gold teeth
30. Hummers
31. Livin large, livin large, livin large
32. Crotch grabbin
33. Ass spankin
34. Gesturing at a low-and-wide-angled lenses
35. BET camera crew in everyone's face
36. A Catfight: "Listen, bitch..."
37. Profound Lyrics
38. Someone named Trina
39. Fat beats
40. Stolen hooks
41. All the fellas in the house make some noise
42. 2 or 3 Guest appearances (eg Ashanti featuring Method Man & Fat Joe)
43. Straight-fingered arm gesturing
44. Lip licking
45. The baggiest jeans imaginable
46. Remy Martin or Courvesoir back in da traila
47. Lots of overtime
48. Double entendre
49. Picture cars (low riders are out...hummers and sportscars in)
50. Skeezers

The Unrepentant Flake

1. Tends to flourish pretty much everywhere
2. Always feels justified in what he is doing
3. Thinks only of himself
4. Has money problems
5. Has ADD problems
6. Tends to surround himself with others of this ilk
7. Makes poor choices
8. Is difficult to do business with
9. Is difficult to be friends with
10. And his kind dominate the known world

Large Format Paperback v. Supermarket Fiction

After paying $18 in fines at the library, I picked up two books I had on reserve: The Bird Artist and The Shipping News. I read The Bird Artist earlier this year over a 3 week period, stopping and starting and stopping and starting.. I didn't really appreciate it so I'm givng it another go, largely due to MidB's raves and those of the Ntl Book Award peeps.

The librarian gets my books from the computer and starts scanning them in and I notice that the Shipping News has the poster from the movie on the cover (w/ Kevin Spacey and some ladies) and its dimensions have been reduced to that fat Supermarkety aspect ratio. I confess: I kind of balked when I saw that. I recoiled. Mentally at least. The Bird Artist is just fine...a little thinner and larger with a sensual velvety cover. The dimensions of the book make me thing there is GOOD READIN inside...LITERATURE...The shape of the Shipping News makes me disrespecct the book completely.

Odd, how a format has this much power not only over my decision to read a novel, but also power over my experience of reading it. It makes me think that people experience the act of reading in different ways. There are twice as many pages in the Shipping News. More pages with fewer words on them. Which means more turning. More page turning. People like to turn pages, it makes them feel like they are getting somewhere with their story and their lives. Large format paperbacks have more words to the page, which makes for better savoring.

I know that in the end it is all a bunch of words, but I do think the format (hardback, large format paperback, paperback, e-book, Beatesque pocket-sized square books, whatever) influences the experience. I am conscious of my prejudices but I think I would like the Shipping News more if it were a larger format paperback with a cool textured cover. Maybe I'll swap it out.

Take a Swing, Tall Guy

So I just got back from Hollywood Video where I almost got in a fistfight with the night clerk. I returned a copy of Last Days and a copy of Spirited Away (which didn't work). When I told him that Spirited Away didn't work in my DVD player he shrugged and kept returning stuff.

"When did you get this?"

"I rented these 5 days ago."

"Ooooh, that's not going to work. We need to find out ASAP if there's a problem."

"Well, I didn't try to watch it until last night."

"Then it's like you trying to get 2 five-day rentals for 1."

(incredulous) "I just want to watch the movie that I paid for, man."

'Well, what do you want me to do about it?"

"What do you think I want you to do? I want you to credit my account for the price of the rental!"

At this point a young Latino couple appears with rentals in tow and the clerk ignores me and starts to ring up their stuff. I start to go back into the store then realize there's no way I'm giving my money to these people unless they do the right thing here. So I get behind the Latino couple in line and when they leave the dude says, "You got ID?"

I'm not renting a movie and we're in the middle of an argument so I say, "What do you need my ID for?"

"You want me to credit your account or what?"

So I give him my ID and he's muttering to himself and I say, "What's up with the attitude?"

"You're the one causing problems."

"Whatever happened to customer service? My God!"

He gives me my ID back. "You're not getting the credit," he says.

I pull out my trusty pad and do what I always do: Ask for his name.

Of course this escalates everything and I write down everything he says. "So now you're taking away the credit that you owe me and were in the process of giving me, just because you feel you can."

"I never said I was going to give you a credit."

"You just did!"

"No I didn't. You got witnesses?" he growls.

I can't believe this is happening. "I can't believe this is happening," I say. "You can be sure your manager will be getting a call tomorrow."

"Well, I'm not giving you a credit."

"Well, f*** you, then." I start to leave.

"What did you say?"

"You heard me!"

He comes toward me but he's still in his little booth and one of his co-workers is coming over. "Come on, take a swing, tall guy!" he shouts.

Take a swing, tall guy. Excellent.

Which I should have done. A better man would have. All of this offensive customer service builds up and it has no place to go. The next time this happens I will take that swing.

Sometimes fighting is the right thing to do. We are taught that it isn't, but I think it is appropriate sometimes, and this was one of those times. Sometimes you have to stand up to the bully or he's going to bother you at recess forever. And sometimes that requires the exchanging of blows, uncivilized as it might be.

So I encourage everyone to boycott Hollywood Video, which we all know is a terrible establishment anyway we just go there because it's convenient.

Thanks for listening.

The Management.

Fat Lip

Today while playing basketball I got hit in the mouth and now it is getting big and puffy. I also have a bloody gash on my eyelid from an errant finger and a bruise on my knee when I went down. My hand and foot also hurt from punching and kicking inanimate objects after missing a dozen easy ones.

Sometimes it feels good getting beat up but this is ridiculous. I am enjoying the fat lip, though, which is a good sight gag and should be seen in person. I would have taken a picture but my trusty Elph is on the fritz so I will have to describe it to you. My fat lip makes me look like a doofus; it immediately knocks 20 points off my IQ (more if I make faces). It is the right side of the upper lip that is affected--it's swollen to twice its regular size, like a collagen injection that didn't spread out properly across my mouth.

If I make a Sid Vicious snarl it looks like I have some kind of rare disease. My eyes, nose, chin, cheeks and ears recede. I am lip. I am all lip. God save the queen.

Beard-Growing Contest

Just wanted to see if anyone wanted to have a beard-growing contest. My brother, my father, and I will be having one over the Xmas holiday, but now seems like a good time too!

I'm already in the process of letting myself go so a good patchy growth of stiff fly hairs on my face will definitely add.

I was going to write a big thing here about men and their fascination with facial hair and the curious phenomenon of how one's manliness is directly tied into their ability to grow a nice thick beard (?!?!??!?!??!?!??!), but I spent all morning noveling and now I'm tired.

Any you stuffy clowns wanna bring it?

I Just Want To Talk To A Human Being

The Ticker

Batman Franchise way up
The new Crash down
Cronenberg's Crash up
Paul Auster way down
David Shields even
coffee down
tea up


My favorite experience in life is spending ten minutes going through a convoluted sequence of automated phone menus only to have your eventual operator ask what your account number is again and why are you calling. Sometimes I wonder if the automated menus are really doing anything at all--maybe they're just something some grad student in psych thought up to replace Muzak....something that gives the caller something to do (punch in numbers), which engenders a feeling of progress, and therefore, a feeling well being.

All I want is to talk to a person.

Circuit City has an awful awful one. Unemployment is particularly sadistic; It gives you the old one-two-three combination: first, all the BS menus (all the information they re-ask you, of course), second, the extremely long wait times, and then, the masterstroke, the "We can't take any more calls at this time, try back later" life-ruiner. I love how they make you wait fifteen minutes to find out that the line is busy. Brilliant! Recently I had the misfortune of riding the bus around LA and I got to the main bus/train depot in North Hollywood and there's no real signage and no one really works there and the little bus stops have destinations printed on them but no route maps and certainly no schedules. I call the MTA ride line and I hear "the approximate wait time is 20 minutes." Yes. Efficiency defined.

Today I had to call SAG because they won't let me use an actor for voiceover work unless I become a signatory production, blah blah blah..pay the actor scale, etc...pay the fee...takes 2 weeks. So I went through their website, didn't find the information there so I called down to their office on Wilshire with four questions: 1) What are the steps required to sign an ultra low-budget contract, 2) How much does it cost, 3) How long will it take, and 4) Can I conduct the VO session while the paperwork is being processed.

It took me 45 minutes on the phone and FIVE transfers to get this information. It was horrible. It was like this was the first time they had ever been asked these basic questions. They just kept transferring me and every time I'd have to launch into the whole narrative from the beginning. The last woman asked aloud, "Why did they transfer you over to ME? Why do I get you?" to which I said, "Lady, apparently I am fated to talk to each and every one of you until an answer to my questions is cobbled together." To which she actually laughed. She answered my questions (even though it wasn't her department...hmph!) and that was that. Man, it was awful. Really really horrible.

But it was still better than punching account numbers into my cell phone and hearing "The approximate wait time is eighteen minutes."

And forget about putting the phone down and going about your business for eighteen minutes. The last time I did that someone picked up about 2/3 of the way through my wait and when I wasn't there they hung up. So there.

Noveling, Vol. 1

The Ticker

Galaxy Quest even
Rushmore down
Ishtar up
Tranny Bars up
Saabs even
Minivans up
Los Angeles up
New York down
San Francisco up


The woman across the aisle is in her late 30s/early 40s and traveling alone. A brown sleeping bag bound by twine sits at her feet. She is not homeless or down on her luck. She seems respectable, like someone’s aunt. She is reading a romance novel. It is called “A Loving Scoundrel.”

While in City Lights I come across an interesting book on the history of romance novel cover art. I consider buying this for Mid-B and our Off The Radar book group. It is mostly pictures, though. Too many pictures and not enough Theory for Mid-B. Mid-B would accept the book graciously but cast the book aside in his mind. I put the book back on the shelf and slide the spine even with all of the others.

When I turned 24 I was living in Seattle and temping. I did some interesting jobs but mostly I was the fill-in office assistant, handling spillover data entry tasks and anything the regular admin assistant couldn’t get done. Once I worked for the Gas Company for about a week and I was the only guy in the office. Everyone in there was female and they all read romance novels. I thought about writing a romance novel for fun because it was all formula and because it might be a lark for someone with superior intelligence (?) like me. I “borrowed” a book (they were lying around everywhere) and took it home to do research. I couldn’t make it past the first chapter. I realized I wasn’t capable of writing a romance novel. I didn’t believe in it like they did. I wasn’t able to work on projects I didn’t believe in and make them good. Romance writers believe in their material in a way that I don’t—and that makes their books good (to their readership). Garry Marshall believes in “Pretty Woman.” He believes in its schmaltz, its simplicity, and its misogyny. He believes in the whore turned princess fairy tale. He believes that clothes make the man (and woman) and that shopping at Beverly Hills boutiques is the route to enlightenment. I could not fake my way through directing “Pretty Woman.” I do not believe in it.

This is all to say that I’m starting another ridiculous project—the novel project. In the spirit of NaNoWriMo I’m going to bang out a draft of a novel by the end of November. I’ve been freewriting over the last few days and have a basic plot structure. We’ll see what happens. It will be called “Strange Weather.”

If anyone else is interested in writing along with me this month (Dr. Write?) please let me know. We can slide behind on our word count together. Or maybe not!

Tommy's Joynt

Better than the bus, longer than the plane, more civilized than the plane, more legroom than either. The train. Ah, Amtrak. Yesterday I made the impulsive decision to rendezvous w/ K (of NYC and New Orleans fame) in San Francisco for a few days and, believe it or not, the train seems like the best option. There is one that runs up and down the coast from Los Angeles to Seattle (the Coast Starlight or the Coast Stargazer or the Coast Sundowner) and it's 50 bucks to go to Oakland. So there you have it. The train. The catch: It's an 11 1/2 hour journey.

I could probably walk faster. But hey, it's seems fun and romantic and I haven't taken the train in 25 years and occupying myself for 12 hours isn't a problem, so I buy the ticket and I'm on my way.

And it seems like a brilliant decision at first. Taking the train means you're off the grid and on these tracks and seeing things you've never seen before. There's the endless (very paved and very organized) junkyard in Van Nuys, the burnt hillsides in Simi Valley, the huge pumpkin field outside of Oxnard, and then you swerve over near Santa Barbara and you roll right up the coastline to Salinas almost. It's a beautiful trip. The train is about a third full and I have a window seat by myself and it's perfect. There's the dining car and the snack car and the parlor and the lounge car, where a Mennonite man has his arm around his Mennonite wife. They are watching Galaxy Quest on the TV in there while the surf crashes outside.

Around the ten hour mark it starts to go bad: My laptop dies in the middle of "Born Into Brothels" and there are AC outets in the bathroom only, an overzealous Christian woman starts laying into her travelling companion using the words "fuck" and "bible" in sentence after sentence, and the train slows down, delivering me in Oaktown an hour late.

But K is there waiting and we head immediately to Tommy's Joynt, a dive on Van Ness on the cusp of the Tenderloin. Tommy's Joynt has ridiculously cheap mound-of-food eats (steak vegetables and potatoes style cuisine -- inelegant for LA types). Somewhere between my first round-o-beef sandwich and the bratwurst sandwich and the kielbasa sandwich a mountainous sexually charged person of indeterminate gender sits down at the table over and tucks into his/her mound of food. I bring the sausage sandwiches back to the table and I'm explaining the differences between the two types of sausage and K starts to say, "I prefer the bratwurst--" when this thing interrupts. S/he calls to me, saying, "I prefer this..." And s/he is tonguing the end of a turkey drumstick (a most unerotic image, I must say) and winking at me! I look back at K and he's grinning guiltily and I know there's been some interchange between the two while I was out gathering food.

"I just want to know if she's a man or not," he says. K is a savage. He is all id, and for that very reason quite fun to be around.

K keeps staring at her and assessing whether she's pre- or post-op or a genuine woman or what. She's large and Arabic with big breasts and a face scarred by hard livin. Her body looks female but there is some mannishness in her face. When she gets up to leave K is still looking her up and down and she takes this as a sign and--turning her back to the rest of the restaurant--opens her coat to reveal voluminous bare breasts.

I avert my eyes like some prude while K takes a good long look.

"You wanna have a little bit of this later?" she says.

She's looking at me, but I point across the table at K and say, "He does."

K is still staring.

"Well, I'll give you my card, how about that."

"No thanks," I say. But K takes one, smiling. She closes her coat and leaves. K shows me her card. It says only "Hayat" in a a slanted fancy font, with a phone number underneath. K thinks her breasts are real. I tell him to call her and ask her if it's that important.

So he does.

While he's on the phone he asks about availability and location and cost. We learn that she costs $300 for all night, to which K says, over the phone, "Hmmmm. That's a little rich for my blood.' But she says something encouraging and before I know it K is out the door and in her car and finagling over price. She has her top off again, in plain view of the world, and she's caressing K's face, saying "I could do $200 for a cutie like you."

I'm still inside eating my sandwich but K eventually comes in and gives me the full report. Hayat has driven off, into the world, with her natural breasts hanging out. "The bars will close soon," she told K. "And then I will be getting a lot of calls. I am fantastic, you know. You would not be disappointed."

K is convinced she's a woman. K is obsessed with why she costs so much. K is drunk. I am insatiably hungry. We are in San Francisco. Everything is going to be fine.

Resume Building & wayofthepuck.com

I don't think I've had to put together a resume in the last seven years. The last time was when I first arrived in Los Angeles and was looking for work, any kind of work. About once a year I'm asked for a camera resume and I give them a list of credits without embellishment and that's that. But the act of trying to sell yourself by documenting your achievements in one or two pages--it's been a while since I've had to do this.

Over the last few weeks I've been building a website for my documentary. This is the first time I've tried to build webpages and it's been kind of annoying. There is a learning curve and for some reason I'm feeling a little slow in the head and it's taking me longer to figure out technical stuff than the average human.

But the act of resume building is proving to be even more daunting. It's simultanously demoralizing and invigorating.

Here are the Nine Stages of Resume Building

1. Feeling like total shit. I mean, an absolute loser. If there was ever any doubt about your total lack of credentials, put them down on paper. Yikes. Boy are you unqualified.

2. Procrastination. Procrasto-bowling. Procrasto-blogging. Procrasto-lounging.

3. Knowing at the last minute that you have to crank out something after all and realizing that no one is going to take your self-deprecating sense of humor as an asset.

4. Framing your work and life experience in a positive way instead of a negative way, which makes you feel like an Absolute Fraud. You are not stretching the truth here, but you are stretching the essence of the truth, which is even worse. The details of the resume are accurate but it feels like white lies and half-truths and it suggests that you are Much More Than The Loser That You Really Are.

5. Realizing that you actually have accomplished quite a bit in your life and that your resume is, in fact, impressive. You are impressive. You are an unstoppable force in the universe. Your posture gets better and your teeth get whiter and you answer all of your phone calls, even the ones that say "restricted" and "unknown."

6. Submitting the resume (you) to the ideal people.

7. Submitting the resume (you) to second-tier entities.

8. Submitting the resume (you) scattershot...to anyone who'll listen.

9. Experience the hubris-puncturing realization that you are unhirable. Breathe. Go directly back to number one.


Forunately I'm at Stage 5 in the process so things are still looking up. There is still the illusion of a bright future, hey! Tally-ho!

Anyway, I encourage everyone to visit the site and check it out. I don't really know what I'm doing in html land so if anyone has any advice or pointers please send them my way.

In the end the whole thing is an ad for myself...probably more than it is an ad for my movie even. Me me me. If you get tired of it you can always go somewhere else for a while. But please tell me. I don't want to be the guy at the party who goes on and on and on while the girl is thinking about organic shampoo and those cool black Diesel pumps she saw at the Grove.

I wanted to accomplish two things with the website:

1. Sell the idea of FUN
2. Sell the idea of PROFESSIONAL

That is all.

Here is the link to a test version of wayofthepuck.com

When you go to the site there'll be a puck and a mallet against a white background. Fish around in the top left corner of the page for a secret button. When your pointer turns into a hand, click and you'll go to the homepage.

I'm interested in how things work for you PC users. If stuff looks janky in your browser or if the movie files don't work or if you notice busted links or typos please let me know. I'm trying to figure out how to compress the movie files better so that they are a lot smaller but don't look awful and pixelated.

Thanks for listening and thanks, as always, for the help.

The Management

The Policy of Fun Eatin

First, there is the big black woman at the ribs place on LaCienega who chastises us when we can’t finish and congratulates us when we overorder and eat up everything. “Good boys,” she says, smiling. “Good boys.”

Second, there are the parents, who arrive on Sunday, spend a few days on Catalina, then come back for a few nights with me in K-Town. I expect the best and fear the worst and imagine things will come out somewhere in between.

Third, there is the Policy of Fun Eatin which I will employ while the folks are here. The Policy of Fun Eatin is a good guide to life but can get expensive and I usually only trot it out for special occasions (Mid-B’s presence, for example).

Fourth, there is Mandate of the Unknown (also known as the Inveighing Against the Stale), which states that an important and often overlooked element of fun is the Discovery of the New Thing.

Fifth, there are the usual winners, the dim sum and the Korean barbecue, but this time there is the lovely Puran’s on Hillhurst for lunch and a wonderful oyster bar in Long Beach with live jazz and brick-sized bread pudding (I wussy out at the last minute…the thing probably has 1200 calories).

Sixth, there is the Exercise Used To Expel the Black Cloud of Gluttony Guilt.We go on a crazy 10am walking tour put on by the Echo Park Historical Society. 80% of the group is originally from Washington, including four lovely ladies from Seattle, one of whom seems interested in me, and yet, is not. I highly recommend going on walking tours of blighted areas to meet normal (normal is good, BTW) Northwesterly women.

Seventh, there is the Behavior of the Parents, which is exceptional and not too insane and actually pretty fun. I enjoy being a tourist in my own town and they are not up in my grille about the usual stuff so it’s nice to see them and go around and do the things of the world. Turns out my fears were for naught.

Eighth, there is the Impending Move From Los Angeles, which suddenly has me enjoying this city immensely. Why do we need Close Calls With Death to convince us that life is worth living? Why do I need to move to appreciate this crazy sprawling mess of a city? Anyway, I am having fun now w/ the parental units but I will still move, God willing.

Ninth, there is the Good Sportsmanship Award, which goes to Pops for eating kimchi, chicken feet, and other questionable things against his will. He also endures Mom and me looking at pottery and overbrowsing at Books Kinokuniya in Little Tokyo.

Tenth, there is the Uzbekistan restaurant on Sunset and LaBrea which is the perfect coda for a weekend of Fun Eatin. Uzbekistan has to be seen to believed. Uzbekistan is in a lousy strip mall but the inside is Full On. There is a disco ball, an old man singing up on a stage with mini-disk accompaniment (“Uzbek Karaoke?” We wonder aloud), a smallish dance floor where two ancient couples swing each other around, a looming and mysterious Russian Man who stands over us (“KGB?”), a strange doorman who talks to himself and sways erratically, long tables filled with extended families and Uzbek cuisine, colorful murals, recessed onion-dome shapes and minarets, and a domed rotundaesque ceiling. I have a shot of Stoli to play along with the vodka-swilling old ladies and nearly choke (“Hey this isn’t sake!”). There is a confrontation between and two old dudes (a beautiful young woman in a beautifully unfashionable (and colorful) 60s-style print dress intervenes). A red-haired former beauty replaces the Uzbek fiddler on stage and sings forlorn ballads in Russian while staring glassy-eyed into the corner of the restaurant. We can’t understand a word but we know she is singing about some dude who done her wrong…but she’ll survive dammit. Hell yeah, she’ll survive. Dad takes pictures.

We finally order (kabobs, yogurt cucumber salad, trout and mushroom sauce, a difficult-to-describe lamb-veggies-and-oily noodles dish, and two non-metric/non-standard 22oz Russian beers) and when we do so the ominous KGB guy looms right on over to the table. The corners of his mouth turn up. It’s not quite a smile but for him it is.

“Good boys,” he says, patting Pops on the back. “Good boys.”

Caddy-wompus

“Get back on the interstate, east, go one exit up, exit the 138, go right. Then you wanna go and make a left a Checkers. At Checkers. Then that’ll go around and you’ll see a carnival. Go past the carnival and around. Wait. Left at Checkers, then left into the carnival. Pass the carnival on your left. Then you want to go right and it’s all the way in the back.”

“Let me get this straight,” I say. “I wanna go east on the 20 one exit, left at the exit—“

“Right at the exit.”

“Right, right. Right at the exit, left…”

“Left at Checkers”

“Yeah, left at Checkers. Left at the carnival…”

“It’s all about the carnival. Once you see the carnival you know you’re close.”

“Pass the carnival and go all the way around back…”

“Yeah, it’s a place called Caddy’s. Caddy’s.”

“And you’re sure they’ll be open?”

The young African American man and his girlfriend look at me. “We both drive cabs for a living,” he says. “Hell yeah it’s gonna be open.”

It’s Friday night past midnight and my intrepid assistant Lil C and I are in Conyers, Georgia looking for a place to drink. Everything is closed and Georgia’s notoriously wacky liquor laws have us worried. There exists a very real possibility that we’ll have to go home without a drink, which I most certainly need after enduring the punishment of Elizabethtown.

We are also worried because people in this county have some sort of Bad Directions Gene and we’ve been led astray a few times already. These are pretty specific directions, though, and if they’re still wrong then it’s almost certain that there’s something in the water preventing these people from comprehending north south east and west.

But no, we make it to the surreal ghost carnival and around the back of the minimall, passing through a litter-strewn parking lot and in front of a just-closed Latino restaurant/bar with lots of big bikes out front and hooligans with itchy violent drunks on.

“Uhhhhhh,” says Lil C.

But we continue on around to the very back of the minimall and it’s there where we first see the Mecca. Loud music belts out of the very last establishment there, a beautiful dive called Caddy’s. There is a lineup of motorcycles here as well, but it seems marginally less intimidating and we really need a drink at this point so we park and venture inside.

It’s a dark and seedy place with low visibility and a mostly empty checkerboard dance floor on which big girls are lap dancing hick guys. It’s not a strip club; it’s something more disturbing than that. It’s a meat market for big-n-ugly folks who live in Conyers. I hope I don’t sound arrogant here or anything, but there really is something wrong with these people and the bone structure of their faces. I mean, there really must be something in the water. Or something.

“There are no normal people here,” notes Lil C, and it is true. Everyone is a freakshow and everyone is hooking up with everyone else. It’s an evolutionary cul-de-sac here, a breeding ground for some lost offshoot species. The women are haggard and busting out of their clothes. The men are biker-cowboy simian and prowl the crowd for meat. Everyone is grinding on each other’s crotches like this is socially acceptable behavior. To them it is, I guess.

It’s the kind of scene you’d scene in a movie and say, “There’s no way that could happen. Some Hollywood guy wrote that.”

Lil C is dressed in what I call her “hippie prude” outfit and I’m wearing distressed jeans, mock Timberlands, and a black shirt. We do not fit in. At all. To hammer the point in, the barmaid serves our beers in Styrofoam go-cups. No one else is drinking out of Styrofoam go-cups. Everyone else is drinking out of bottles…or pint glasses. Lil C wonders if this is secret code for “You guys don’t belong here. Leave.”

But we’re not going to leave. We’re going to enjoy our anthropological investigation and our beers and we plant by a speaker and watch the weirdness unravel around us. You’ve heard of dirty dancing? Try filthy dancing. And not with Patrick Swayze and Jennifer Gray. Filthy Dancing with the Lord Humongous and the Sea Hag. People are having sex and getting pregnant with their clothes on. It is vile and pornographic and exhilarating all at the same time. I feel like Marco Polo or something. Or Jane Goodall. I feel like I could do very well with the ladies here if I wanted to.

It’s my turn to buy so I head to the bar and when I return I notice Lil C is out on the dancefloor getting her groove on with a short dude in a Mohawk. Granted, this guy is probably the most normal guy in the place (if it were any other place in the world he’d be gay but here he’s straight as an arrow), but he eventually leaves C on the dancefloor by herself, heading over and joining two hachetfaced girls doing shots.

Lil C is simultaneous repelled by the local alpha males and disappointed that more of them aren’t hitting on her.

I am thinking about working my moves on the only normal person in the joint, the beautiful black DJ who seems as out of place as us. There is a dude sitting right behind her though and when I request Missy Elliot’s “Gossip Folks” he kind of glares at me and so that’s that.

The locals get drunker, the music gets louder, the lap dancing intensifies, and soon a fight breaks out as well.

“Get your damn hands off my wife!” an African American man is shouting at this white dude on the other side of the bar. The white guy isn’t responding, so clearly he is guilty of mauling this woman (with her approval of course). “Get your damn hands off my wife.” A bunch of security materializes out of nowhere and there is chest thumping and looks of concern and shaking of heads and heated anticipation and the white guy knows he is gonna get his ass kicked so he just kind of sits there and looks pensive. “Get your damn hands off my wife!” Which, I think, is a direct quote from Raising Arizona.

Lil C and I vow to come back the following night, but we have to get in by midnight because of the Georgia Sunday Law, which prohibits alcohol sales after 12 midnight on Saturday night. The way bars circumvent this is to sell buckets of beer right up till 11:59. One must purchase the alcohol before midnight but one can consume it past then.

Since we have a 10am start we know it’s gonna be a close call and all day it causes us great stress, so intense is our need to return to Caddy’s for a repeat performance.

Eventually we do make it at about 11:50pm—by some miracle—and we buy our buckets of beer and chill out. But there is a $10 cover because the all-girl Nashville 3band Mustang Sally is here and performing live. The $10 cover seems to have weeded out the riffraff and Caddy’s seems almost respectable tonight. There are red tablecloths on the tables even! Shocking. But we know what Caddy’s really is…

Earlier that day someone told us about the Great Conyers Syphilis Outbreak of 2000. We laughed but we weren’t that surprised. A syphilis epidemic in Conyers…it had to have started and spread at Caddy’s, like that scene in Gremlins where Spike the bad gremlin jumps in the swimming pool and turns into about a million little monsters in two minutes.

Thank you, Caddy's, for the lovely memories.

This is a picture of the forlorn and spiritless Lil C before experiencing Caddy's:



This is a picture of Mustang Sally onstage. The couple in front of us sucked face openly for about forty-five minutes. They kissed like it was a county fair pie eating contest, with liberal tongue action inside and outside the mouth wall.



This is a picture of the intrepid Lil C after having her Caddy's epiphany. "Oh, what a brave new world to have such things in it!" Note the slightly unhinged expression and the recently-escaped-from-the-psych-ward aesthetic of the green bracelet:

The Deluge of Vitriol -or- The Very Confessional Fiona Apple

I admit I’ve always been a closet Fiona Apple fan. I liked “Criminal” when it came out and particularly remember the brutally grimy hard-and-frontal flashcube lighting the video employed. I also liked “Shadowboxer.” She was lumped in with all of the other angry white girl soloists of the time—products calculated by the industry to fill in the gap Alanis was leaving behind—but even then I knew she was superior to Alanis and the others. She was tiny and waifish yet also kind of manly and her masculine piano-based composing made me think more of a future Tori Amos.

But man was she confessional. And her lyrics were hideous. Or a lot of them were, anyway. Sure she was trying for something a little more poetic and intelligent than the other white-girl product the labels were churning out, and hey, she was only nineteen, but man, some of her verses were cringable. And did I say confessional? And clearly a little bit of a head case as well.

Around the time “Magnolia” came out I learned that PT Anderson and Fiona Apple were dating and I went out and bought her sophomore effort based on this information and a cursory listen to the first single,“Fast As You Can,” in a NY movie theater. I figured if my favorite director can see something in this girl-becoming-a-woman then my closeted-and-not-acted-upon fandom might just be validated. I went out and bought “When the Pawn” and it was excellent, excellent. I noticed that Jon Brion (Anderson’s composer) produced, and I have tremendous respect for him as an artist, so there you go, with all of these people respecting the confessional waif-girl, maybe I was right all along to like her.

But man was she confessional. Things seemed tempered a little bit this time around, but that self-indulgent core of victimy confession was still all up in my grille. Can’t she sing about something other than Men Doing Her Wrong? Sheesh.

So the new record, “Extraordinary Machine” came out Tuesday and I bought it at the iTunes store for ten dollars (which is what a record should cost, BTW), and it too is excellent. This is a great record. A great great record.

But man she’s more confessional than ever. Some time in the six years it took to make this record PT Anderson and Apple broke up and she’s dragging all of her angst and rage right into the public view. If I had to say what “Extraordinary Machine” is about, I’d say this record is about PT Anderson being an asshole. The biggest most abusive asshole in the world. What a dick—I mean really. The shadow of Anderson looms in every song, assholing all over the place. What an abusive piece of shit. Someone should call the authorities.

Now, I gotta admit that I’m kind of siding with my namesake on this one. I have no doubt that he’s a sarcastic jerk of a megalomaniac, but I would be even worse under the circumstances. First of all, it took her 6 years to put out this record. What is she doing with her life all of this time? How does she spend her days? I’d start getting a little sarcastic too if I came home from directing “Punch Drunk Love” and found my girlfriend watching TV and being needy. So I’m already a little prejudiced and in every nasty resentful line she spits out I think about the situation as a whole that probably went down and how Anderson was probably justified in his assholery and how she—prone to hysterics and hyperbole (a bad combination)—is probably blowing things out of proportion and exaggerating for effect.

So this is why this intrigues me so much: Like M. Night Shyamalan’s "The Village," Fiona Apple manages to divide my logical and emotional sides right down the middle. I hate what Fiona Apple stands for (privilege, sloth, self-indulgence, neediness, public confession) but I love her music. It’s angry and beautiful and sad and lonely and spirited music. And sometimes her lyrics do work and I’m saying “Damn you, Fiona, damn you to hell! Real men don’t like this music!” In her second record she belts out this one line: “Baaaa-by lay your head in my lap one more time” and the way she sings it always slays me no matter how many times I hear it.

This time around, after an eleven song Deluge of Vitriol:

"Curious you looking down your nose at me while you appease"

"Oh you stupid silly pastime of mine"

"I took my glasses off when you were yelling at me once"

"When I was looking with calm affection you were searching out my imperfections what wasted unconditional love on somebody who doesn’t believe in the stuff"

And some particularly acidic passages:

"It doesn’t seem fair that your wicked words should work in holding me down"

“What is this posture I have to stare at?” that’s what he said when I was sitting up straight."

"But I’m not being fair, cause I chose to listen to that filthy Mouth"

"But I’d like to choose right, take all the things that I said that he stole, put em in a sack + walk into a lovelier light"

Fiona does a surprising thing:

She relents…confessing the thing, the real thing…not the tough raging thing she wants the world to think she’s confessing. She sings (and it’s not in the lyric sheet, which is telling) very softly, after an loud and angy rant…she sings “I miss that stupid ape….”

I miss that stupid ape.

And that kind of says it all, really. I don’t hate her anymore. I don’t hate her at all. I actually feel kind of bad.

But not enough to want to date her.

Movie Trailer, 3rd Attempt

Low-rez AVI Version:
Teaser#3 AVI

VERY LOW-REZ MP4 Version for speedy downloads:
Teaser#3 MP4

Warm, nonthreatening hobbyism.

Movie Trailer, 2nd Attempt

Here's the latest. It's more of an experiment, really. Something I did to amuse myself. I'm not sure how practical it would be on the website (where people already have an inkling of what the movie's about and want to find out more).

Low-rez AVI Version:
Teaser#2 AVI

VERY LOW-REZ MP4 Version for speedy downloads:
Teaser#2 MP4

Thanks for listening.

Movie Trailer, 1st Attempt

After a long discussion with my friend Michael about the form and function of movie trailers, I decided to do what I've been putting off for some time now and edit together a trailer for Way of the Puck.

It was a daunting task (even though it only took a few hours).

It is a difficult thing to try and reduce your baggy monster to 60 to 120 seconds of images. I find you can really only sell one or two aspects of your movie. To do otherwise starts to seem schizophrenic. So what is it? Is it warm, funny, exciting, wacky, intense, magical, cerebral, pretentious? Choose two.

How to convey the essence of your film without trying to compress it and without seeming pretentious or off-putting.

I fear this trailer is pretentious and not fun....

I'll try out a few different trailers, I guess...this is the first.

Low-rez AVI Version:
Teaser#1 AVI

VERY LOW-REZ MP4 Version for speedy downloads:
Teaser#1 MP4

Thanks for listening. Comments are welcome.

Found Poetry, Vol. 3: The Snow Dog Run and Don't Need Gas

From a document found near the LA Leadership Academy, an advanced school for kids in grades 6-10. "Students are selected to attend Los Angeles Leadership Academy through a random lottery held each spring. After the lottery, students whose names are drawn must take placement tests and register as students in the school. This occurs in July before the school year."

Misspellings intentionally reflect the state of the manuscript. In the case of ambiguous penmanship (c's that look like e's, h's that look like n's, etc.) I have decided to give the author the benefit of the doubt.


The Snow Dog Run and Don't Need Gas

Front
Xeroxed from Scientific
American
News Scan
By the Numbers
Myths of the City
Problems of Urbanization Are Mostly False Stereotypes
By
Rodger Doyle
From the beginning of the
Christian Era blah blah
blah blah
blah
An enduring myth is
that
the country
is healthier
than
the city blah blah blah
sidebar
sidebar
graph
blah blah
further reading
New Data
from
The earth Institute
show that there is more than enough
room
for
ex
pan
sion
:
Urban areas now cover only 3% of the
planet's
land surface (end, thank god)

Back
(handwritten, bubble letters)
Doris Tapia
Positive Trash componies
Positive More tehcnology
Positive Alot of policie officer
Positive More jods
Negative
--I love Angel!-- (strikethrough)
Negative gangs
Negative graffittie
Negative the taxes
Negative war
Negative more jails and juenalge then schoot
--The a car are you use car mr-- (strikethrough)
The care use to much gas.
LA!
--I love Chris-- (strikethrough)
and they sometime run out of car.
the snow dog run
and don't need gas and need water.
I (heart) --Angel-- (strikethrough) Cat
--Angel-- (strikethrough) Cat
+
--Doris-- (strikethrough)
=
(Heart)
I love --Angel-- (strikethrough)
(Strikethrough)
--Los Angeles Doris
Tapia Palaci Angel--
(strikethrough)
LA!
LA!

The Pointless Liar

I confess. I am an embellisher. Not a habitual embellisher, but enough of one to comment on it now. Sometimes I’ll work an 18-hour music video but when people ask I’ll tell them it was actually 19 hours. Why? Is 19 hours somehow more impressive than 18? Not particularly. So what gives?

I’m through lying about my age but there was a time when I’d always back up my age by a year. I’m not particularly vain and I don’t really care about this stuff but I’d always tell people I was 24 when I was 25. I also tell people I was an English major, when in fact, I wasn’t. Granted, Evergreen allowed you to declare whatever you wanted on your diploma (it didn’t have to be backed up in credit hours), but the fact remains it doesn’t say BA-English Literature on my diploma. It says BA-Film Production. And yet, I’ve told so many people this story that I almost believe it’s true.

Perhaps it’s to distance me from the film students of the world. I don’t want people to think I’ve actually wanted to do this stuff since I was in college. That suggests failure, I suppose. I want to be different than them. And it’s not that being an English major affords much respect in the world. So why do I tell people this? Really strange.

I am like the 74-year-old man who runs into a hot senior citizen at the supermarket and tells her he’s 73. I lie sometimes, but pointlessly. Does this make it any better? I’ll tell people I stayed up until 6 in the morning when it was actually 5:30. Is 6 somehow cooler than 5:30? Really really bizarre.

Another one of my stories is that I was accepted to NYU when I was first applying for colleges. “I was accepted, but I didn’t go,” I sometimes say. “I chose to go to a state school and it’s the biggest regret of my life.”

Now, I did send off for information from NYU when I was 18 and pored over it and dreamed about being Woody Allen and Martin Scorsese but I knew even then that I’d never get in so I never actually applied. And I DO regret not going to university at NYU, absolutely. And yet, there is a whole story to it now, hallowed by usage and consecrated by time--that I had the smarts, that I wrote the charming, witty essay, that they wanted me but I couldn’t afford it, etc. That I was afraid to enter the world. That I’ve spoiled my opportunities…if only, if only.

And during those college years I dreamed of New York, dreamed the cliché of living in New York and writing novels and making arty black-and-white short films about people smoking. I fell for the romance of the place, the romance of living in squalor in Manhattan. It’s not that I wanted to live in style or that I wanted to be where the action was but this was where most of the important artists of the world gathered and I wanted to be close to that. Maybe this city had a certain something, a certain pulse that would give almost-artists that final push toward relevance. Mainly it just sounded like a good adventure.

After a while though it just seemed like a lot of hassle. In the end I lost interest and went to Asia for awhile and enjoyed Tokyo and then got stuck in Los Angeles for a great many years. And although I have forged out a life here and wrested some contacts from others and started a steady ascent toward respectability, LA has ground my soul right down to dust, melodramatic as it sounds.

So I am moving to New York. If not in November, then in March.

Why not? I have no attachments, no family, nothing. It’s just me and my projects. And who knows, maybe great things will happen there. Maybe I’ll learn to love my job and I’ll be able to work on what I want, and bicoastally. Maybe I’ll double my contacts instead of losing all of them.

And I’m not lying here. At least I think I’m not. And it certainly isn’t pointless. Perhaps it’s a stupid move but I don’t care. I will seize control over my life. If not control, then a certain new lack of control. But at least it will be on my terms.

The Bowling Syndicate Launches! (A Full Week Ago)

Hi everyone, I'd like to invite yall to a new team blog my good friend Michael and I are developing about the joys of bowling. It is called The Bowling Syndicate and I contribute there as The Condiment.

We are trying to build a big baggy monster of a bowling blog and yall are invited. Send Michael or me an email or leave a message in the comment section and we'll get you signed up. There is no "I" in team, remember.

Dating For Dummies, Vol. 2: Playing Dress-Up

The act of buying clothes makes me feel like a sellout. Makes me feel like everything I hate in this world--superficial and lame.

Middlebrow once said: "Eric, you have to think in terms of dating as a project." And I think that he is right. It is impossible to get your head around something so wispy and sparkly and nebulous as love, but I can certainly break dating down into concrete indentifiable and accomplishable acts. And it is these little tasks that, once completed, will start the inexorable push toward love. Or so he (we) theorizes.

And the first thing is clothes. Women like clothes. I dare anyone to get huffy about this either. Bring it on, because you are lying and you will lose. Women like clothes. They like other things too, like puppies and unicorns and literary theory, but they especially like clothes. And clothes make the man. So go to the mall. The mall has it all.

But I'm draggin my heels all the way there, kid.

I've always had a certain mistrust for people who like to play dress-up. It always seemed so fake and pretentious and expensive and such a blatant paean to "adulthood" (whatever that is). Now that I am adult I don't mind it so much. But whenever I went to parties and saw twentysomethings gussied up it reminded me of T's home videos of his young four-year-old daughter prancing around in a bridesmaid's dress with too much makeup and fancy hair. She was playing dress-up and so were the women at the parties. It was Halloween, but for sophisticates. And for some, it was always Halloween.

There are certain class-aspiration issues I have with dressing up, but that is another story, a story that would derail this blog for some time.

No, I was always going to be the guy in a T-shirt and cargo shorts and basketball shoes, and that's the way it was. That is the way I saw my life back then. There was no need for fancy clothes because, well, clothes are just things you put on your body to prevent you from running around naked in public. And shoes are things you wear so you don't hurt or cut up your feet when you're walking around downtown.

I saw an ad for $4000 thigh-high Gucci boots yesterday. They were very expensive, and extensive, and so attractive they would put you in intensive care...

No, SERFS was my filter and if women didn't like E's Nondescript Couture then they could just be filtered out. Fine. I will filter. I will filter with impunity. I am Regular Guy and I don't wear fancy shirts.

Now everything has changed. I am making an attempt, an attempt to meet the Women of the World halfway.

The problem is I am starting to like it.

I have always liked shoes (women's and men's) but now I am doing something about it. I have more non-T-shirts now than ever before. I look amazing. Spectacular, in fact. I even shave sometimes. And when I travel, I make sure I am looking sharp, just like Cary Grant, but in an invisible hat and tie.

I am a tall drink of water.

So why do I feel so ridiculous?

Solomon Grundy and the Satanic Churches -or- Lady, I am a STUDENT!

"Nobody walks in LA" ~ Persons Missing
"Nothing works in LA" ~ Middlebrow

Solomon Grundy came on Sunday to promote his new book "Shalimar the Clown." Over the last ten years I'm batting .333 with Grundy's books, trying and failing with "The Satanic Churches" and "God Shuffled His Feet" but getting thru the literary wheelie-poppin of "Midnight's Younglings" and enjoying it. Grundy is a big writer and quite famous and the death sentence leveled against him in 1989 is still in effect. So I give him mad props for writing something that offended an entire people enough to want to kill him. Does art matter? You bet it does. When was the last time art caused a riot? And that's what this is, really, a prolonged religious riot.

"Shalimar" is about a clown who becomes a terrorist and the story apparently goes all over the world from Kashmir to LA. I like clowns (especially Kashmiri ones) so I decided to take the newish Gold Line out to Pasadena to see Mr. Grundy in the flesh. Would he have bodyguards? Would he be wearing some sort of kevlar protection? Mind you, at this point I still thought "Shalimar the Clown" might be a children's book, so I wondered if security had been lax at LAX (and, by extension, at Vroman's, the Pasadenian bookseller).

Well, I overshot my stop and got out of the train at 4 exactly, the start time of the event. I had to walk ten long blocks to the bookstore and when I finally arrived, at 4:10, I discovered there was no reading happening there at all. For the big readings, Vroman's uses a church nearby (by city hall, they think). "Well, it would have been nice if that were noted in the ad!" I grumbled to a female employee boxing up books. She shrugged. Apparently I was the only fool to take the ad at its word and not call ahead.

So I hit the streets in the direction of city hall, arriving at the church at about 4:20. The church was large, with multiple wings and entrances and no signage whatsoever. And no people. Where was everybody? I finally found the event down some stairs but there was a sign on the door saying they couldn't admit more people because fire code would be broken. There were a half dozen disgruntled folks demanding to get inside and a woman blocking the entrance, arms folded, not budging.

People kept appearing, though, and the woman would admit some but not others, driving the half-dozen disgruntled into a frenzy. "They were inside already," the woman said, "and now they are returning."

"Lady," a tallish Indian man said, very indignantly, trying to follow on the heels of the last woman admitted, "I am a STUDENT!" There was a brief pause and then woman lowered her head slightly and the man went inside and that was that. It was like some literary Jedi mind trick. I am a student! Incredible! A well-groomed lesbian couple looked over at me immediately, since E possesses the Face of Reason. "Oh, okay," one of the them said, nice and sarcastic, "Well I'M A STUDENT TOO!"

"I'm a student of life," I volunteered.

But the spell had been broken and the woman guarding the door hunkered down. We were not getting in. And this all could have been avoided had people been doing their jobs properly. One screw-up, okay, maybe, but it's like this all the time. Middlebrow is right--nothing works in LA. Nope. And just the proximity causes things (and humans) to break as well. My Elph broke, my consumer DV camera broke, everything breaks here and never gets fixed. And then there is the information, which comes at night and which is always wrong. City of Angels, Land of Errata.

Grundy was to read on Monday at Dutton's in Brentwood at 7pm and I thought briefly about attending, but a 7pm engagement in Brentwood would be a 5 hour commitment. I'd have to leave at about 5:15 to get there by 6:30 and the event probably wouldn't start on time and then there would be the drive home. Sorry Grundy, but five hours is a little much. Even for you. Even for clowns.

Marketing the Turd

So now I must build a website to market this thing I have made. I don't know the first thing about web design and I doubt I'll be able to learn Flash in a month and the thing'll be primitive, no doubt, so I've starting thinking about ways to create a simple yet elegant site. A basic movie site is going to have a trailer, bio, synopsis, and contact info, but it would be nice to stand out in some sort of way...some sort of new way beyond that...besides glitzy animation. So I encourage the Front Porch Readership to please list any ideas they might have for the site or for the marketing of the turd in general...and to point me in the direction of other sites that work well in a minimal/elegant way.

I am thinking about attributing all sorts of quotes in the movie to famous historical persons. For example:

1. "In the moment of playing air hockey there is no misery" -- Sir Isaac Newton.
2. "Air hockey is the great equalizer" -- Karl Marx.
3. "It has a beautiful rectangular table that's laid out geometrically" -- Pythagoras.
4. "When life knocks you down, play air hockey" -- Lao Tzu.
5. "This movie is a masterpiece!" -- Voltaire
6. "One word: Sensational!" -- Benjamin Franklin
7. "Air hockey still loves you" -- Charles Goodyear

This could be funny and also kind of stupid. Who can say for sure? I think I can probably get past libel suits because these people are 2500 years long gone. Other ideas?

On a similar front I'm thinking about creating a series of buttons for the festival premiere, things like:

1. Plato liked air hockey
2. Air hockey is always great
3. When life knocks you down, play air hockey
4. Air hockey PhD
5. Hot air hockey action. Dig it.
6. Air hockey still loves you
7. Air hockey is good for you
8. Air hockey is like a painful massage (?!)

Now that I think of it, a Nabokovian site might not be a bad way to go. I'm thinking about starting a blog for the movie that starts out totally pedestrian and gets more and more insane. Perhaps I can create some fictional drama ... Perhaps I can allude to characters in the film that don't actually exist...perhaps one of them gets "thrown in jail" and I have to "cut his scenes out of the final edit." This could be great fun. I don't know if I could get in trouble or not. Maybe some resentful commentor (a fictional retired player perhaps) keeps pestering me and calling the film "Absolute Shite!" and "Slanderous!" I think the blog could be a great way to build hype for the film with blog entries that may or may not be true. "P called late last night and said that the scene with Mark in the desert had her crying. I never thought this movie would resound with women the way that it is...."

I'm thinking about creating some "vintage" air hockey cards for display on the site. You know, with stats on the back and a picture on the front and things like: "Favorite shot: Left Wall Under."

I've thought about getting my comic book guy to create little stick figure caricatures of the three main players and the philosopher...to just kind of hang out and be around...to put on stationery, etc.

As always, I welcome ideas and comments from the Front Porch Readership. You know I love those comments homey.

The Slush Piles of America -or- How a Film Festival Is Like a Credit Card Company

Yesterday I dropped off a DVD copy of my movie at the Sundance office on Wilshire and LaCienega (right across from the gargantuan Flynt Publications building, or "The Hustler Building" as I call it). People think that Sundance is in Utah but it is not, it is right in the heart of this here rathole, Los Angeles.

Although they select 16 features for the documentary competition from 600 to 700 entries, I calculate my odds as being much worse than that. Sundance programs 1) Big splashy premieres w/ big names 2) Sundance returnees and others who have developed a following at Sundance 3) Friends and family 4) Everyone else. Although the deadline was yesterday, much of the programming has already been done (although we proles aren't supposed to know this because then we might just give up hope). A feature I pulled focus on was accepted a month ago, to which I say, "Great, fantastic, I see you have an inside track, good on you because I do not." So there are those who have an inside track and then there are those who do not. The way I figure it, the slush pile isn't competing for 16 spots, they are probably competing for three or four.

So I do not expect to get in. Is this, E's Philosophy of Diminished Expectation, more fatalist (bad!) or Buddhist (good!)? Who is to say? The reality is that the whole business is rigged, just like life, and that it is not a democracy and nothing good ever comes from the slush pile. The whole point of the slush pile is making the proles feel like things are fair and that they have a chance in life, a chance of upward mobility. I worked on the New Orleans Film Festival selection committee one year (back when there was a NOFF) and the slush pile was a joke. I don't even think a lot of these films get watched.

My friends and I have been thinking about starting our own festival, the Culver City Film Festival (to be shown in R and N's living room), not to have a venue to show our films, necessarily, but to give us the proper blackmailing force with which to tempt staffers from other festivals (who are also filmmakers in their own right, everyone is a filmmaker don't you know). I'll program your short film if you get mine in, etc. A festival is also a good revenue stream (like screenwriting competitions). I don't think there are any festivals that run a loss in the world...certainly no writing contests. Now that I think of it, I'm going to start a poetry competition and charge $50 per entry! the winners will get published on my blog, how about that.

And then I'll watch the suckahs line up. And I shall get rich offa their dreams.

So here's to the Slush Piles of America. May you grow, undisturbed, higher and higher, until you blot out the sky.

Unobtrusive Poetry

"She sat up slowly, looked in turn at each of us, and her dark eyes were like twin entrances to two deep caves. Nothing lived in those caves. Maybe something had, once upon a time. There were piles of picked bones back in there, some scribbling on the walls, and some gray ash where the fires had been."

"He had a hat the size of a Toyota on his head, a foam thing, red as blood and wobbly as a drunk at dinner, and as he walked down the street whistling like an old flute in a windstorm he would pause and look around, his jack-in-the-box head springy, his eyes a couple of water pistols, wet with tears of frustration..."

These, according to the latest issue of Writer's Digest, are "glittering nuggets of unobtrusive poetry." Or: two "well-chosen word pictures."

Hey you SLC writer people, what gives? I've always resisted these magazines, but saw this one today and made an impulse purchase since I'm putting the movie to bed and gearing up for the novel.

Also, is it just me or is this magazine geared toward housewives? Nothing against housewives, mind you, or magazines, or gearing things toward other things... all the standard disclaimers apply here,, etc, blah blah...it just seems like there's a disproportionate amount of advertising geared toward unhip women (not that housewives are unhip, of course, that goes without saying).

Mariah and the Big Red Phone

Once there was a girl named Mariah. She was quite pretty and could sing very high notes, and a lot of them all in row. She became a pop star and made millions of millions of dollars. She was very popular in the States but she was even more popular in Asia, where she and Leonardo DiCaprio were idolized for many many years. A marriage between the two would have caused the Asian news media to detonate with happiness.

Mariah was short and round with a lovely fat boot and a mountainous bosom. She liked to wear tight miniskirts and tube tops that strained at decency. Sometimes, in the throes of passion, she would just explode out of her clothes and join her lover in bed. There were those who thought her dress was indecent but all admitted she was never vulgar like Janet Jackson or even that puta loca Whitney Houston. Even though her clothes were provocative, everybody knew that Mariah was innocent…she was still just a young girl singing songs of falling in love and the young girls of the world sang along with all of their hearts.

Time passed and Mariah grew older and more tired and there were new girls who came up and replaced her, young divas with names like Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera whose in-your-face couture made Mariah’s bright microminis look churchy. In 2005 Mariah put out a new record. And though many said it was her best record to date, she knew that it was automatically a failure, that there was no way it could come close to the numbers she had put up in the nineties.

One night she went to North Hollywood to shoot a video for her new single “Get Your Number.” The centerpiece of the performance was a humongous red telephone and this made her suddenly very sad. The phone reminded her of the giant props often used on old “Yo! MTV Raps” videos, particularly early jamz from DJ Jazzy Jeff & the Fresh Prince. She sighed and went to her trailer. She would get into wardrobe and go through hair and makeup. This would take hours.



The phone had a splotchy pool of red leaking out of its mouthpiece (intentional, it seemed). There were those who thought the phone was melting. Others thought the phone was crying…or bleeding. Some thought the phone was drooling.



The giant red phone beckoned to the idle crew and—although it was strictly forbidden—many went up and touched the phone. Sitting there, these people underwent a quiet but palpable shift. They became pensive and withdrawn and thought at length about the pointlessness of their existences.

When Mariah finally came out it was after lunch and the crew was tired and bored. She was wearing a tight one-piece black cocktail dress and painfully high high heels. She was very topply for someone so squat and low to the ground and she felt everyone’s eyes on her face and body. The crew wondered about her, wondered how old she was, tried to triangulate her age and came at a range of 33 to 38. She looked a lot older than they remembered and someone thought she would look better if she took off her war paint and dressed like a mom and someone else said was snaggletoothed and a few perverted misanthropes celebrated the withering of a woman whose entire being and career had been defined by its surface beauty.

And though it was forbidden, crewmembers took photos in secret, hoping to show their friends and lovers glimpses of Mariah in 2005. But it was not to be. Mariah’s longing to preserve her former sheen and her deeprooted disdain for what she had become caused the cameras to disobey. The resulting photos were like UFO sighting pictures (out of focus, heads cut off, very grainy)--compelling but not convincing.

Like this:



Or this:



Or even this:



Maybe it was her in those pictures, but then maybe it wasn’t. It couldn’t be confirmed and that was the way she liked it. She liked being soft and impressionistic and ephemeral and making the viewer fill in the gaps from memory.



And though the phone seemed a little lame, and though the crew was small and disinterested, and though she was tired and just wanted some peace, she climbed up to the top of the phone and reclined just so, just like the director wanted. The phone wasn’t meant to be lounged upon and it hurt her backside and she complained a little, but she did so with reasonable cheer. By this time the crew was getting used to her and she was starting to look young again, like that actress Julie Delpy in “Before Sunset” who had aged ten years but become even more beautiful in the interim while that Ethan Hawke guy just looked tired and hungry and snaggletoothed.

Now was not the time to be depressed. The cameras came back into focus and the music came up. She smiled. Her hair was magnificent. She was not thinking about her role in the 2001 bomb "Glitter" or any of those other dark things. She was smiling and she was belting out the words to her latest single.



All these years and she was still on top of her game. On top of the world, if you will.

On top of a phone at least.

I Only Did It Because Lisa B Told Me To

My entry in the Google Poetry cavalcade using the keywords "cleavage" and "hyperbole" (I changed the punc-tilly-ation, of course).

The Weight and Cleavage Sonnet

The details: It’s amazing how
Maybe if you boys showed a bit more
Cleavage (Weight and Cleavage are
Films in French) – the one directly below.

Hyperbole: Unless you (shadow
That you are) mean THAT there
Cleavage. MY ankles and cleavage are
Not what I said. I think you know…

The blues: Maybe if you boys showed a bit more
In our critical reports. Although,
Maybe if you boys showed a bit more
Cleavage! Weight and Cleavage are
More than a bikini top. The others had
Enough cleavage. Weight and cleavage are.

The Secret Lives Of Others

Sometime last week a pinup calendar mysteriously appeared on the camera truck. Somebody (probably the sound department) had smuggled it in and hung it prominently above the bench. It was opened to the month of September where an aging cheerleader stared out at us, sleepy-eyed and legs spread (skirt protecting her naughty bits), her cheeks dented inwards from sucking with tremendous force on a lollipop. The lighting was flat and the image was not particularly erotic and I thought about taking it down because it offended my sensibilities and there were women in my department, blah, blah...

The calendar was called "Hoodrat Hoochie Mamas 2005" and the rest of the girls possessed a similar ghetto-hottie aesthetic. The Latina in cutoffs bending over to sponge a lowrider, the African American girl showing hyperbolic cleavage in a hot pink bra and Adidas sweatpants, the incongrous working-class Irish lush in a tartan skirt holding a Guinness in either hand. The women weren't pretty, exactly--they looked like rejects from the legitimate modeling contest down the street--but their inclusion in this girz-in-da-hood calendar seemed appropriate. Their short bios were sexually suggestive, to the point of satire, and for the first time it occurred to me that it just might be satire after all.

Turns out the calendar was the brainchild of N, the on-set dresser, a short, quiet, respectful young man with glasses, small moustache, and ambiguous sexual orientation. N had made the calendar on spec. This blew our minds. I tried to picture him getting some seed money together, receiving head shots, doing the auditions, casting the girls, approving the costumes, organizing and locking down the locations, conducting the photo shoots, overseeing the printing and the copywriting, all of it. It kind of threw me, it really did. He had obviously spent a lot of time putting this project together.

And that made us love the calendar and love N for making it.

I love that my Southern Boy 2nd Assistant--who won't let his wife work and who smokes very aggressively out of the side of his mouth--I love that he adores old show tunes and drives a Korean car. I love that my PC left-wing loader obtains 80% of her meat from hunting. And I loved that one morning when the reticent, mild-mannered late-40s/early-50s VTR/playback guy started dancing and singing along--COMPLETELY WITHOUT IRONY--to the Violent Femmes on the radio.

It was so surprising, and yet, not.