Hump the Hostess

The all-emcompassing Movie Hate is not so new anymore. It is difficult to pinpoint when it all started, but think it began around the holidays, when the gf and I went to Casino Royale in Tacoma and were underwhelmed. I do remember enjoying The Prestige in Taipei, and I also remember loving The Squid and the Whale on DVD back in November, but I can't locate a traumatic episode that may have caused my Movie Hate. Some switch somewhere got engaged, that's all.

Last week I saw that Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf was playing at the Arclight (the best theaters in LA) as a part of AFIFest or something like that. Aha, I thought, this will be a great test and will determine for once and for all: Is it the movies that are the problem or is it me? I actually fantasized about blogging afterwords, how I would declare that cinema had been redeemed and how I'd thrown away all of my DVDs and replaced them with a singular copy of WAOVW that played in a loop.

My expectations rose. A lot was a stake.

I hadn't seen Who's Afraid of Virgina Woolf since college and that worried me. One by one my heroes were being cut down to size. What's next? The Coen Brother's pre-Fargo catalogue, no doubt.... But WAOVW was especially important and pivotal filter back in the day: Could one be trusted if they didn't like this movie? Could you ever really be friends with someone if they didn't "get it"? Could you ever really be intimate with someone who didn't think Duck Soup was funny?

Well now.

In the end?...

In the end Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf was....pretty good.

But it wasn't amazing.

And the last half of the movie dragged and dragged and dragged. Sure, it dragged like a long night of alcohol-fueled arguing would drag, but why would I subject myself to that punishment???

But I will say that the first 30 minutes were stellar. And I laughed out loud, over and over and over, with a packed audience. And then I just got bored with George and Martha and their schtick...and then it got very very melodramatic, much more so than I remembered...

But it was still pretty good. And that is all we can ask for.

And it was interesting to see it big. With an audience. And it clued me in to how I have changed as a viewer.

My new favorite moment? When Richard Burton gets the shotgun out of the closet and walks into the living room and levels it at Elizabeth Taylor's head and pulls the trigger and eveyone screams and this umbrella comes out of the end of the gun.... Taylor gets up and lunges toward Burton, and she's playing this mixture of utter relief and fear and hilarity and drunkenness and the total BURN of the joke makes her kind of horny too and she starts making out with Richard Burton right there, in front of the guests, because she's actually kind of happy to be alive and with him...

That was great.

Incident at West Hollywood Park's Basketball Courts

This just happened so I thought I'd write it down before it vanished forever.

There will be a test.

Sleepy E goes down to the park at around 11:30 to shoot around by himself. He knows the main game doesn't start until 1:30, but he isn't really interested in running with that crowd--he just wants to shoot around for a half an hour.

There are two full courts. There's the A court and the B court (unofficially labelled so..the A court gets the pick-up games, the B court gets people without skillz).

Each court has a preferred side, closest to the park itself. Which I'm going to call the A-side. So if there are four half-court games going on then the A-side of the A-court gets the best game and the B-side of the B-court gets the worst. The B-side abuts a questionable softball diamond encircled by a chain-link fence.

All four courts are vacant, so E sets up shop on the B-side of the A-court, in order to be the farthest away from other humans. About 15 minutes in E notices a figure walking toward the A-side of the A-court. E turns his back and continues shooting at the B-side.

Suddenly, a whistle. Then another. And another.

E: (to himself): Surely that person isn't trying to get my attention by whistling at my back?

Another whistle.

E decides to keep shooting and not turn. Finally...

Man: Hey!
E: (turning) Yes?

A Man sets a small backpack on a bench and comes out onto the A-side of the A-court. He is empty-handed. He has no basketball. He yells the length of the court.

Man: Shoot down here!
E: (pause) But I'm shooting on this side.

The Man stares in disbelief.
E waits, then decides to be neighborly (even though he wants to shoot by himself).

E: You can come shoot over here with me if you want.

The Man frowns. He shakes his head, disgusted, picks up his pack with an angry swoop, and leaves.

E turns and keeps shooting.

That's it!

Now, the test:

TEST
1. What kind of person whistles at a stranger's back to get his attention?
2. What kind of person doesn't bring a basketball to a basketball court?
3. What kind of person shouts orders at total strangers?
4. What did the Man expect from this interaction?
5. What if the Man had a kid who was playing on the playground and The Man thought could keep a better eye on him from that side of the court, and so wanted to play but on that side and so that was what was going on???
6. If number five is true, why did the Man not say something like this?
7. And why did he exit the park altogether with no children by his side?
8. Why are people such weird assholes?

Hammer Time

Went to the UCLA Hammer Museum tonight to hear Miranda July read from her first book of stories "No One Belongs Here More Than You." July is the writer/director/actor of the similarly titled art film "Me and You and Everyone We Know" which won some awards at Sundance but which I will probably never see.

Dave Eggers says "Fans of Lorrie Moore will want to take Miranda July's 'No One Belongs Here More Than You' and rub it all over themselves." Or something like that. So there.

This is a picture of Ms. July:



I like the idea of Ms. July very much. She grew up in Berkeley, moved to Portland and became a performance artist, then did a movie, then a book of stories, then some kind of artistic interactive website called "Learning To Love You More." I think she put out a record too. It seems like she experiments (and succeeds with) different media because she likes to try new things. What a great reason to do anything.

A Renaissance Girl.

What I do not like is the idea of the Reading Itself. I think I pretty much hate readings. I hate the Appreciative Noises. I hate the Knowing Nods, the audience wanting to participate, VERY MUCH LIKE A JAZZ SHOW, THE JAZZ NODDING, WTF IS THAT??? And by jazz I don't mean the Utah Jazz, of course. I hate the Q & As: "Where do your ideas come from?" I hate the Performance of it all. I hate the Pandering to the Audience by trotting out the Short Funny Stuff. I Hate The Person Who Tries To Show Off By Assuming Familiarity With the Author's Work.

Most of all, I hate sharing the story experience with 150 other people. I want to experience it by myself with no one else in the room clucking their tongues and nodding appreciatively.

July actually commented about this: "Well," she said, "I'll let you go now. I know how it is to be trapped in a reading." Then she laughed. "Readings. Maybe they're actually good for us, or something, otherwise why would we keep going to them?"

I Will Dunk Again

Well, I turned 36 last week and I'm easily in the worst shape of my life. I've been far heavier before (nearly 240 lbs then v. 225 now) but never have a been this physically unfit. I gained about 20 lbs on the Meat Train and didn't exercise once over the course of those eight weeks.

Then I went and played b-ball on Sunday. Whoa. I played decently, considering I had to sit out most of the time to regulate my breathing, but one glaring thing stood out (besides sucking air the whole time): I Should Be Dominating These People.

I Should Score At Will On These Guys.

I'm being beaten down the court by intermural guys, guys who got cut from JV, you know, HOBBYISTS... It's humiliating, really. This got me thinking about another humiliating thing in my life: The fact that I'm 6'5 and I can't dunk anymore. So after watching Baron Davis pack that facial over square-jawed Karilenko last week I got inspired to do something about it. I haven't been able to jam with any regularity since I went to go live abroad in 96. I might have put down some baby dunks in Korea but I didn't really play in Japan and I didn't really get into a real game in LA until 2001.

So I haven't been able to dunk regularly in over ten years.

I'm giving myself three months to put one down with authority, and four months to do it with regularity, and six months to do it in a game off the dribble.

I'm also going to drop 30 lbs. (but not in 3 months).

Am I the Shawn Kemp Comeback of the Chevy Chase Rec Center in Atwater Village? Am I that absurd? Perhaps. Perhaps an almost-40, slow-footed white guy has no business looking cool on the court and I should just work on my set shots and chuck 3s like everyone else.

So these are the goals:
1. Score at Will
2. Lose 30 lbs
3. Dunk

Also, I assure you: I am not using the definite goal of dunking as way of conquering the abstract goal of getting in shape.

I just want to dunk.

Time to strap on the Strength Shoes.

Midnight Beat Down - or - The Glorious Return to Poverty

Back in the summer of 94 my brother spent a few weeks travelling around Mexico, then returned home to Tacoma via a four-day bus journey from Mexico City. I remember him describing the first three days as being relatively painless but obviously quite wearing overall...but then the next six hours contained about the same amount of physical and mental anguish as the first three days, and then, in some strange carbon-dating scheme of half-lifes, so did the next three hours, the following ninety minutes, etc, until the final ten minutes of the journey were just as hellish as all of the torture that came before it.

Rather like being able to hold your bladder for 2 full hours, but having problems getting the key into the front door and struggling across that final threshold, the living room, to make it to the bathroom.

This is how it feels on the Meat Train, where we are to finish this week, but they keep adding days. We always seem to be four days away from finishing. It's like Lewis Carroll's race that cannot be finished, because the distance to the finish line can always be divided in half, ad infinitum....

And this is probably my second blog entry since we began two months ago, so it's definitely getting in the way of that...

No, I do not think I am cut out for feature films.

This makes me feel like a pussy amongst my peers (not really, but I just wanted to use the word pussy once as my 20th high school reunion approaches (okay, it's 2 more years, but STILL))...Okay, yes, I do feel like a little bit of a pussy, truthfully...

Working on the Meat Train has provided a lot of existential clarity, however. This is the Good Thing.

Working 70-hour weeks (80 with the commute, etc) is not my idea of a good time. Yes, the money is decent, but only because so many hours are worked. Is it worth it? Well, if you want to buy a house in Los Angeles you're going to be hard-pressed to find anything non-awful for less than $800,000, so there, so this is what a lot of people do...they sacrifice their lives to working nine months in a row (70 hours a week) on a TV series, year after year, then they buy a house and then they are happy.

What is the role of a human/father/partner? To be present in the lives of others? To take responsibility for one's own happiness? To be a Money Making Machine?

I am not sure.

What if I work 80-hour weeks for the next fifteen years, attempt to retire early, then get hit by a bus my first day on the golf course? What then? Is that a good life?

There was a story on NPR a few months back that talked about the difference between giving raises to employees and giving bonuses and which worked better on their productivity. The bonus system always dangled a prize in front of the employee for completing a short/mid/long-range task and proved to be 50% more effective than the raise system, which made people happy temporarily but did nothing for their productivity. People got used to the new income level almost immediately and saw it as what they deserved. And soon that level became what they Expected, and what they were Dissatisfied with, even though they were doing the exact same thing as they always did.

This is all to say that it is human nature to turn wants into needs. It is easy to get used to a certain lifestyle or standard of living. It is difficult to consider a Return to Poverty when one has crawled their way out of those circumstances...

It is difficult to be the adult student at the back of the class of 23-year old grad students.

And how can one return to entry-level status when he or she is approaching 40? Hmmm. Then again, Pride is a Motherfucker. As they say...

And then there is the concept of Retirement, which was invented during the Depression, I think, to make rooom for a younger work force. Do we slave for 40 years and then stop abruptly and then idle around for 20? Or do we try to intersperse those 20 years of retirement throughout our entire lives, knowing that we'll be working (at something we love, hopefully) past the age of 65?

I don't know about other people, but I'd prefer to live the latter way. Unfortunately, the two-weeks-off-a-year American Work Model doesn't really facilitate this. The European Summer Month Off system might sabotage their economy but what does it do for their happiness? And what about some of these European states with 35 hour work weeks? What about them?

All I know is that the Coen Brothers work ten-hour days and Michael Winterbottom works eight-hour days and their movies come out just fine, under budget every single time. When they show up to work, they work. And the crew makes no overtime, but then they can have dinner with their loved ones.

I know it's not for everybody.

We Are Not Teenagers Anymore

Discussed:

1. 401(k)s
2. Pedagogy
3. House Payments
4. Bran Intake
5. Gastrointestinal Distress

Pick's Disease

1) Pick's disease is the old name for the disorder frontotemporal lobar degeneration (FTLD) and in particular the behavioural variant frontotemporal dementia (FTD). Certainly a number of patient support groups continue to use the name "Pick's disease" in their titles. This confusion has led many neurologists to suggest other names for FTLD. The most prominent is perhaps Kertesz' suggestion of the term "Pick Complex" to encompass not only the clinical subtypes of FTLD, but also the overlapping syndromes of corticobasal degeneration and progressive supranuclear palsy.

2) Neurologists use the term "Pick's disease" to mean specifically one of the pathological subtypes of FTLD. The pathological hallmark of Pick's disease are Pick bodies. These are spherical cytoplasmic inclusions found within neurons in affected portions of the brain.[1] They cause neurons to swell, taking on a "ballooned" appearance.

Spring Cleaning In Time For Picky's Visit

Not even the gf gets this kind of royal treatment (insert rage-deflecting emoticon here).

I will not reek of batch, I will not...

The Horror, the Horror -- or -- Torture As Entertainment

Working on a slasher film gets existential. It is difficult not to ask big questions of the universe and your role inside of it when a large crew intelligent adults is devoting its time to getting blood to splatter in a certain way or getting a camera to roll just so like a decapitated head.

There is a new production model, championed by Michael Bay, and that is the $10 - $20 million studio horror film remake, usually helmed by music video directors. These include the two new Texas Chainsaw remakes, the two Hills Have Eyes remakes, the Omen remake, the Hitcher remake, the Amityville Horror remake, et al, ad nauseum. There are also remakes to Friday the 13th, the Changeling, Near Dark, and The Birds planned. And of course all of these remakes will spawn sequels.

It seems there is a new thirst for horror movies that we haven't seen since the 80s. It could be that I'm just noticing more horror movies because I work in the industry now and that I remember the horror movies from the 80s because I was the intended audience that consumed them then. It could be that there have always been gobs of horror movies, all through the 90s, but I really don't remember them if they did exist, except for Scream, which seemed to launch this new thirst for teen horror.

It could be that I'm getting old and crotchety, but it seems that the new horror model is particularly sadistic and I have to object to it. I haven't seen Hostel or any of the Saw films or this new movie Captivity coming out, but the new horror films are particularly mean and usually focus on torture as a device to scare audiences. Torture as entertainment. There was an article in the New Yorker a few months ago, I think, focusing on the show "24" and it's stylish torture sequences.

The stuff we grew up with no doubt horrified our parents (Friday the 13th, Halloween, Nightmare On Elm Street, Happy Birthday to Me, April Fool's Day, Chopping Mall, etc) but seems particularly cartoony and harmless now, especially when juxtaposed with the new Michael Bay model. Even the darkest of dark 80s cinema, the Faces of Death franchise (people getting mauled by bears, fake snuff footage, etc) seems downright quaint when these days any five year old can go on the Internet and watch Saddam Hussein getting brutally hanged.

Will today's teenagers look back on the Hills Have Eyes remakes fondly, like we look back on Johnny Depp in Nightmare on Elm Street? Or on April Fool's Day? Will they think about the time they snuck into Saw and got scared shitless?

And what's going to happen 10 years down the road? How will Hollywood movies ratchet up terror to the next level when the next generation is laughing its way through Hostel like a comedy?

Get On That Meat Train and Ride, Choo Choo!

So this is what I'm doing with my life these days. Unexpectedly, I am starting to root for this movie. It will contain buckets of blood, not horrible acting, gorgeously moody cinematography, and quirky J-Horror sensibilities (like a camera attached to an arm as it pummels someone to death). Expectations are so low it could surprise everyone....

Grapefruit Juice

When my brother and I were young men and growing into our 2-meter frames and eating our parents out of house and home, Pops started buying frozen grapefruit juice and keeping it an unmarked plastic pitcher near the back of the fridge. We would pour out glasses of the stuff, thinking it orange juice, or just mouth the pitcher itself and wind up with a blast of sour unexpectedness down the front of our shirts.

Pops discovered that we'd leave the stuff alone..so he cultivated a taste for grapefruit juice so that he could carve out a little corner of the edible world that we wouldn't eat through.

Today the gf (girlfriend, not grapefruit) and I were in Trader Joes. Now I drink grapefruit juice by choice, dammit. I must be a real man. Sour and bitter foods are for adults only.

Then there was the time Pops wrapped some leftover pizza in brown butcher paper and scribbled "Rotten Meat" on the front of it.

Genius, really, and totally effective.

I Hate Movies

Something has happened to me in the last six months. I have begun to hate movies. I thought this would go away but it has not gone away at all. It has worsened. I watched four movies in the new year (all in a theatre, none at home). Tonight I watched Zodiac (for free, at the DGA 3 blox from my house) and thought it underwhelming. Children of Men was a plotless chase scene. Babel was relentlessly humorless. Pan's Labyrinth was okay but all I could think about was reading the Economist. All were way too long. If you can't tell your story in 80 minutes, then what's the point?

In college I could watch Tarkovski and early Wim Wenders and take it like a man, even enjoy it.

The gf says she doesn't know if she can date someone who doesn't appreciate movies. I do appreciate them, I say. I just don't like them. Even the good ones.

And forget about the fact that I'm working on a slasher movie called "Midnight Meat Train" which very well might be the worst of them all....

I do like Team America, however.

Another One Bites the Dust

Martin Amis came to the LA public library on Tuesday evening to read from his woefully serious new novel, "House of Meetings." He is a small, slight man with a largish bobbleheady head and dreadful trembling hands that relaxed as he consumed his water (with a suspicious lime wedge floating in it).

The impressively nerdy Michael Silverblatt of NPR's "Bookworm" moderated. Even with thick glasses Silverblatt had to hold the text inches from his face in order to read.

Amis delivered dry, politically incorrect comments to an audience alternatingly fawning and offended. Amusing, really, to hear the hush fall upon them as Amis talked bluntly of multiculturalism, Christianity, religion in general, racism, and feminism, and nothing, really, of his writing process or the book itself. He seemed quite bored with the whole thing. Seventy five percent of his comments were quotes from other people; it was like viewing some cynical, half-drunk, human version of Bartletts.

Ten years ago I was a big fan. Now he just seems small and alone and unhappy.

The audience was able to ask three questions before the library called it quits and herded everybody to go queue up and get their books signed.

Merry Texting!

In the past two weeks I've received 10 text messages wishing me a happy holiday season (this in place of cards and phone calls and things like that). Is this a national phenomenon or is this the nadir (or zenith) of Hollywood Awfulness?

How I View Myself (After the Holidays)

Happy New Year!

Happy Holidays

Sorry for the blogging silence, everyone. Next year will be different, I promise.

Have a safe and happy new year.

Tip

If you walk into a salon and the owner is the person who cuts your hair, do you tip him/her?

The "What Is This?" Contest

Winner receives a prize still yet to be determined.


Kiss
Ozzie Osborne
Monster Trucks (several)
Barney's Big Surprise
Disney on Ice
Wedding expo
MLKing celebration (2)
Motorcross (several)
Bull riding
Kaiwondo
Globetrotters
Christian concerts (several)
Bruce Springsteen (2)
Tina Turner
Confederate Railroad/Eddie Money
Mexican Mothers Day (2)
Dixie Chicks
'N Sync
Erik Towes benefit
C of C Expo
Popeye's Comedy Show
Anger Manangement Tour (Eminem et al) (2)
Billy Joel/Elton John
Backstreet Boys
AT&T Broadband Comedy Show
Benny Hinn
WWF Smackdown (3)
RV Show (2)
Promise Keepers
Festival of Trees (2)
Blink 182/Green Day (Heavy Metal)
Eddie Money
Brittany Spears
Heartthrobs (India)
Ringling Bros Barnum & Bailey
Gem Faire (2)
Arrowsmith
Korn/Disturbed
Acquire the Fire (Christian rock)
Los Patita de Perro (Mexican rock)
Bob the Builder
Cinderella (Metro ballet)
Lipizzaner Stallions
Card/Coin/Doll Show (many)
Marshall Tucker Band (ugh!)
Vicente Fernandez
Mark Chesnutt
Korn et al
The Wiggles (2)
Dome of Destruction (Cage Fighting)
Army Soldier Show (!)
Green Day
Martin Nievera (Phillipino Concert)
Pepe Aguilar

Camo

I recently made my first and only purchase of camouflage clothes. I've always been fundamentally against the idea of using camo in contemporary fashion. These are war clothes. American war clothes.

The purchase was made sight unseen from 800-OLD-NAVY because their primitive website can't handle Safari and I couldn't actually select what I wanted. Since I wear cargo shorts to work year-round but they don't stock them in their stores in fall and winter, I had to make the purchase over the phone. The friendly customer service rep listed all of the colors and styles available in my size, including green and blue camouflage.

"Sure," I said, without thinking. "Give me the camo. Why not?"

About a year ago I read an article in an arts and culture magazine about some fashion company that specialized in creative camo. There was this whole line of rhetoric about reclaiming camo from its warmongering associations. About how the more we wear camo in the streets the more diluted its military link becomes. I thought this was a lot of bullshit, too.

There is a lot of bullshit.

So do they look good or what?

Eye Contact

I've always been lousy at eye contact. It's terrible. It makes me look sneaky, or dishonest, or bored, or disinterested, or that I'm leering at women in the background. I'm conscious of it, though, and I recognize that I'm looking away when its happening. But I can't help myself. I just don't like staring at people's faces for long periods of time.

Perhaps this is why my Celebrity Sightings sidebar is so lame. I go through life with my head down, largely, in a book or otherwise. I'm not going to make that celebrity sighting because I'm not so into the idea of looking at people in general. Z, of course, has had tons of recent celebrity sightings--including waiting at the valet with Dan Rather and sitting next to comedienne Judy Tenuda on the plane--but usually I only have sightings when I'm with someone else who puts their identity together. Then I confirm it or deny it. This is my role in life. To say, yes, you're right, but they look a little OLDER. Or to say, no, i don't think so, nice try, though.

So today I'm trying to start the Eyecontact Performance and Maintenance Directive (EPMD). I will look at people until it's uncomfortable for both of us and then I'll continue to stare into their eyeballs. This morning I went up to the Coffee Bean and felt something happening in my periphery...and instead of ignoring it I turned my head and flicked my eyes over instantly and caught a cute book-reading woman checking me out. She immediately looked down into her book, embarrassed--humilated really! It could have been my vintage green Lucky Charms shirt. Or my charming bedhead. Or perhaps she wasn't even looking at me. But by seizing the moment and not looking away, I reclaimed control of the situation. She feels like she was caught staring, even if she wasn't. Ha ha! Look at all of this fine entertainment one can have by looking people right in the face! My god, who knew?

When the Proactive Measure You're Taking To Avoid the Awful Thing in the Distant Future Instead Causes the Awful Event To Occur In the Miserable Prese

First of all, I'd like to say that Blogger could not accommodate my lengthy title by a margin of two letters. This is bullshit. The last word of the title is "present."

Secondly, I'd like to say that I went down to the hardware store to copy my house keys and car keys, of which I only have one set of each. So far things haven't been a problem but I can easily see that day when I lose a set of keys and have to resort to the others to gain entry to my life again. If there are others...

So I marched down to the local hardware store (Laurel Hardware, not Home Depot, support the little guy) and the old man (it has to be good, an ancient man runs the place!) goes into the back and I hear furious metallic grinding noises and then a couple of minutes later he returns with my originals and the copies on separate little rings and I pay the trifle and then go home and when I stick my key into the lock nothing happens but I think I've just used the wrong key perhaps that's it but no none of the other keys work neither nothing works on either key ring, old and new.

So I march back down to the hardware store, feeling enraged, feeling like I'm the verge of a problem here and that I need to make a serious effort or I'm going to blow up at the old man and that just isn't admirable behavior. The small problem is that I've been sold a product that doesn't work. The big problem is that this has undone something that did work, that is, getting into my house. So one of three things has transpired.

1. The old man set my keys on a surface next to some other keys, made an involuntary switcheroo, then copied the wrong key and returned the two impostors to me (old and new).

2. Putting the original key into the "Play" component of the key thing somehow damages it so that when the "record" side does its thing it records the newly damaged lines of the original.

3. Someone knows I'm going to get my keys copied and quickly changes the locks on my door as an elaborate practical joke.

I tell the old man what has happened. "F***" he says. He goes into the back for awhile then comes back, empty handed. I make some comment and he disappears again. This time when he returns he's holding a new lock in his hand. "S***," he says, "call a locksmith and send me the bill." He hands me the lock and I return home.

I don't want to call a locksmith so I force entry through my small kitchen window, scale the wall, and jump in over my dirty dishes. Then I change the lock.

Now my landlord (who lives elsewhere and wouldn't answer my calls after 5pm) is angry b/c I've changed the locks and is demanding something. What is he demanding again? Who are these people?

Sheesh.

The right thing to do would have been not to plan and not be organize and not think about preventing the bad thing from happening.

The right thing to do is to be lazy and forgetful.

And today I locked myself out of my car when a woman driving an SUV was so far up my ass that when I signalled and slowed to parallel park she couldn't get around me and just honked and yelled and gestured while I did the same thing. After about a minute she finally got around me and I could back into my spot but I was so enraged that I shut the car off but got out with the key forward in the ignition and the car in reverse.

The engine was off but making that humming clicking "I am receptive, please start me now" noise for well over 30 minutes until the vato in the molester van with the giant key on the side took a coat hanger to my door and set me free.

Listing

When you move house you find some old things and lose some new things. I moved over 6 months ago but I'm still coming across stuff that has been buried for years.

Yesterday I found this:



It's a list of books read and movies seen for the first five or six months of 2005. Because of this list I remember the period vividly: moving from Middlebrow's place in Bellingham to the U-District in Seattle, working at a software publisher in Kent, feeling very alone and isolated.

I'd say that 80% of these books and movies I had totally forgotten about. But seeing them now brings them back vividly.

I'm kind of amazed that I was able to crank through this many books while working full-time and enduring a long commute. And since I didn't have a TV or a VCR all of the movies were seen in the theater (up to Ed Wood and below, which were seen while housesitting).

Every two or three years I'll get inspired and try to start a current list of reads and watches...but it always peters out. Finding the list makes me think about all of the other books and films and experiences that have been lost forever. Listing these things prevents them from disappearing...and keeps those periods of my life and all of their nuances from slipping into nonexistence as well.

Seeing "Jefferson in Paris" with my aunt at the Egyptian, the awkward Hal Hartley date "Amateur" at the same theater, the TS Eliot biopic "Tom & Viv" at the Metro, "Miss Parker & the Vicious Circle," Albert Finney in the forgotten Oscar Wilde thang "A Man of No Importance."

I haven't thought about these things in over 10 years...but boy it all seems crystal clear right now.

I suppose Lisa B. knows this which is why she lists her movies (and reviews) in this fashion....

BTW, am I insane, or wasn't there a single-screen theater on 45th in the U-District that was east of the Metro and the Neptune but west of the Ave and the Varsity? I feel like I saw a 70mm print of The Wild Bunch there as well as the original Parker Posey vehicle Party Girl... Hm.

Anyone remember this theater?

When Things Fix Themselves

Can a broken thing really fix itself? I like to think so. That weird shimmying alignment thing that happened on sharp left turns? Gone. That unnerving clicking noise my computer used to make? Gone. My leaky showerhead? Huh, it's fine now for some reason.

I want to believe in this because a belief that things can fix themselves is a vote against entropy, a vote against science and logic and loud shout for the idea of "good luck" or something. This naive hopefulness is probably a diirect result of my lack of mastery over the technical workings of these things...a return to superstition...where I need to make sacrifices to appease the Water Pump God and pray to the Microwave Oven Elves because bad things just happen for no reason in this world so why can't good things too?

Ultimately there is probably some confusion between the symptom of the broken thing and the broken thing itself. The shimmying thing has abated and the shower isn't as drippy but does that mean the problem is fixed?

I hate to admit it, but probably not.

The Fuzzy Logic of Credit

Recently I went to the bank to open a checking account for my company, Creative Ape. The guy setting me up said I had excellent credit and that I could qualify easily for a small business loan or home loan.

"Really?" I said. "No kidding."

I had always thought my credit was kind of mediocre. There were some big scabs from the college years and a lot of late payments, followed by the last ten years of what has been essentially non-usage. Debit and debit only has been my purchasing strategy.

Meanwhile, I've been trying to take concrete steps toward the organization of my sloppy life and one of my tasks was to cancel all dormant credit cards and open just one card with a better frequent flier mile scheme. I discovered there were still a lot of cards which were still active (although there was never any activity on them and they never sent statements and I never called that 800 number on the sticker on the back when the new ones came in the mail). I get a lot of mail from the different companies and often it was difficult to determine if it was a new card coming for an old account or if it was just a promotional thing or what. And who wants to read all of that fine print?

So in the end I cancelled about seven cards that had been dormant for 3 to 10 years. And each customer service representative stuck to the script and asked why I was leaving, especially when I had such excellent credit?

Because this is the data: I've had all of these cards for a significant amount of time and I'm not carrying a balance on any of them and I have no late payments on them.

Well duh. I haven't been using them.

But does the credit bureau know this?

Anyway, maybe I'm missing something, but it seems like my lazy, totally irresponsible behavior has sculpted my scabby credit into something smooth and firm and toned and reliable.

Maybe this fuzzy logic can work in my favor for a change.

Go figure.

Here Comes the Past

In the June of 1993 my girlfriend and I finished up spring quarter, quit our jobs, and moved to New Orleans. She had family friends there with whom we stayed for about four days while finding our apartment on 2nd and Carondolet. After that we were pretty much on our own. I had difficulty getting a job and eventually lied about my experience and got a job waiting tables in the French Quarter. She got a job doing photo processing all the way down St. Charles at the Riverbend. We had no money.

But it was a great time, and great fun. A great adventure, if you will, and one of the only memorable periods of my lame-duck college years. It was my first time to live away from Washington state and it felt so foreign. More foreign than going to foreign countries now. I crave this foreignness often but you can only go away for the first time once, and after that, well, everything pales.

It was a totally irrational decision to take off for a new place with no plan and no money, but had we actutally had a goal of scrimping and saving then we never would have left. And I can say that the adventure shaped me in some way, that it made me a better person, and more worldly, and much happier than I was, and I think about this period often, and about how even the humidity seemed foreign.

A couple of weeks ago an extremely flaky old friend showed up at my door. A and his wife were moving from Seattle down to Los Angeles. He was 34 and bored utterly with Seattle where he was never able to make headway doing artistic things there. He worked mainly in hi-tech and software development but near the end I think most of their savings got eaten up around the move and the transition out of working in Seattle.

They don't have a lot of money. And they don't have jobs. And now they are here. There might be a plan, or a loose goal, or something like that, but it all seems quite off the cuff.

Insane, kind of.

But exactly what my girlfriend and I did when we were in college.

So what has happened in the last 13 years of my life to make me change my opinion about this kind of behavior? I mean, it's always been irresponsible, sure, but isn't it worth it? Surely, it's worth it. Funny enough, I was one of the loudest proponents for them moving down and even gave some kind of "you have to seize life by the balls" motivational speech...but never in a million years did I think that they would actually get it together, say goodbye, and make the physical move down to LA.

Am I turning into a pussy? Is this what "adulthood" is about? Responsibility?

The whole thing is very weird...and it's very weird too to be one of two people that this couple knows in LA. So now there is pressure to hang out and have this whole chapter of my past reopened. I don't know that there is room for him, exactly. He burned me multiple times in our history. I don't know that there is space for new friends, or new old friends, or whatever. I have my life and I am satisfied with it and now there's this whole weird new awkward component coming in and knocking on my door.

But I am more concerned about what I am becoming, which is someone who acts out of a fear of losing what he has...instead going after what he really wants, which often entails risk...

Even more disturbing is that there is a motivational book about this called "Who Stole My Cheese?" and I have read it!

If I were still 22 and met my 35-year-old self, I'd spend a few days laughing my head off. Then I'd throw up. Then I'd laugh some more.

Eighteen Dollar Burger

The gf bought me an eighteen dollar burger last night (okay, so it was $15.50 w. tax and tip).

Remarkable!

Cinema of the Relevant

1. Jonathan Glazer
2. Alfonso Cuaron
3. David Fincher
4. Christopher Nolan
5. PT Anderson
6. Noah Baumbach
7. David O. Russell
8. Sofia Coppola
9. Richard Linklater (barely hangin' on)
10. Spike Jonze
11. Alejandro Inarrito
12. Ang Lee

Poseurs
1. Doug Liman
2. Guy Ritchie
3. Luc Besson
4. Robert Rodriguez

Noveling

I've decided to revisit the novel for another month, starting today. It's already been 9 months since the first draft petered out back on November 30. I can't seem to make any progress at all these days so I think I need to try the speedwriting thing once again. The goal will be to increase the scope of the book by about 50 percent while trimming by a third and dividing all action into 18 discrete chapters. This will be fairly hard because the things are still very poopy at this point. Alas, poop in, poop out.

Will post from time to time at the Noveling blog.

Anyone up for this? Anyone?

Cinema of the No-Longer-Relevant

1. Martin Scorsese
2. Wes Anderson
3. Atom Egoyan
4. Hal Hartley
5. Brian DePalma
6. Ridley Scott
7. Mike Leigh
8. Woody Allen
9. Oliver Stone
10. Spike Lee (oh wait, Spike is suddenly relevant again)
11. Quentin Tarantino
12. Francis Ford Coppola
13. John Woo
14. Anything with Al Pacino in it
15. The Coen Brothers

Joel Schumacher isn't on the list because he was never relevant

Meteor

There was this crate in the back, see, this unmarked crate in the back of the Bonham's and Butterfield's, that auction house on Sunset. This was six years ago and I was working on something called "Ginger's Rise," a low-budget movie, and non-pornographic too, although you might not be able to tell from the title. We were shooting some uninspired and talky scene in the auction house and ordered not to touch anything and there were paintings everywhere and antiques and they normally peddled fine furniture and wines and jewelery and even antique cars and things like that, but I am not a part of that subculture so it's hard to say for certain what exactly goes down at B & B amongst the auctioneering set. But I found this crate in the back and and lifted the lid off and inside was a dark gray stone, about two feet wide and a foot high and not spheroid or elliptical in any sense but like an enlarged version of the rock you might pull out of the ground, just kind of rocky overall, but smoothed out, very smoothed out, creamy almost although if you shrunk it down to the size of your palms the edges might get sharp again. I reached out and touched it and it was then that an employee happened by, because in stories like these employees wander by just at the moment when one is compromising his ethics and law-abidingness in general and spinal well-being too by leaning over and trying to heft a very heavy space object with poor lifting technique. He told me that it was, in fact, a meteor or rather a meteorite, technically because it was no longer not-of-this-earth and rather now-on-this-earth but not from it, if you know what I mean. I bent my knees and prepared to deadlift this medium-small stone and found that I could not, it was heavier than anything I had ever experienced, heavier than something designed for heaviness, like weights, for example. I could not lift it. It was dense and smooth and ridiculously weighty, like goddamn no wonder it made it here to earth where it probably crushed a football-field-sized hole in the desert before B&B found out and sent out an appraiser to hoodwink the white trash meteorite discoverer and buy the thing for a song and then smuggle it back to Hollywood to peddle to old Beverly Hills ladies with toy dogs and Bono glasses. I am telling this story because I drive by Bonham and Butterfields every day that my car is not in the body shop, and every time I drive by I think of the meteor and how fantastic it was that it was just sitting there, this object from outer space, amongst a bunch of vases and gilt-framed oil paintings in an unmarked crate where no one would ever see it except for me and my friend Luke who happened by with some scripts and when I showed him the 'roid he laughed long and loud and said he couldn't believe it either.

Unnecessary Risk

So we're hired to do seven days of second-unit reshoots on a poor man's "Fast and the Furious" racing movie called "Redline." My guys and I are on a commercial for the first two days so I bring in a whole new crew to replace us for those days and then we come in on "Redline" on Day 3 after the machine is already up and running.

The stage is up by Magic Mountain Parkway but us lowly second-uniters have other things to do this morning--that is, launching the producer's $250,000 Porsche off a cliff and filming it. Five cameras. Two crash cameras at various stages up the cliff, two cameras at the top filming the launch, and one camera below, my camera, right below, far below, but right in the line of fire. A wheel is rigged to pop off during the crash; who knows where that will end up?

The second-unit director is a short Italian stuntman named Johnny with a slicked-back pompadour. The second-unit DP is also short and Italian, and though there is far less back-slapping machismo coming from the DP, he seems willing to go along with Johnny's persistent need to push the boundaries of safety.

I turn around and gesture at the assistant director, who (with the neophyte key grip) is supposed to be in charge of safety on set. The AD makes a feeble comment to the director, who glares defensively. The DP looks at me directly and asks if I'm willing to do the shot from the bottom of the cliff. It seems clear that he is telegraphing me to be the bad guy here and say no for all of us, so, having nothing to lose, I do. "I'll be more than happy to roll the camera and then walk away and have the camera get crushed, but I'm not manning that camera."

The director storms off, cursing me under his breath (this is about 3 minutes after I've met him for the first time). The DP glares at me, as if to say, "What are you doing? Why are you jeopardizing my relationship with this director?"

And so it goes for the next five days, with the stuntman/director putting us in jeopardy. We're out in the middle of the street, where three cars drift around a corner, fishtail, then split the camera on either side. Or they strap the DP to the hood of a car with a ratchet strap around his waist and no helmet. The DP is excited to have this job; it is a giant step up from the low-low-low budget movies he is used to doing. He is going to do whatever the director asks him to do, and the director, since (as a stuntman) he is used to taking unnecessary risks, expects everyone to do the same.

So everyone thinks I'm a pussy. But whatever. I hate this environment where speaking out and standing up for one's personal safety is seen as the most treasonous thing in the world. Take the job. Do the shot even if it's unsafe. If you say anything, you'll never be hired again. Terrible. I'll probably never work with these people again. But that's okay...it's not really too big of a deal.

But the whole situation reminds me of Haskell Wexler's documentary, Who Needs Sleep? which takes on Hollywood and its abusive 80 hour workweeks that cause people to fall asleep on freeways. There are an infinite number of people who are willing to work these hours, hazardous as they may be, and if you try to change anything then you're gonna be canned and someone will fill your spot. It's medieval.

On the last day of the shoot I rear-ended this guy while driving to work. It's been really busy and we've been working long long days out in the sun every day and I was spacy but awake and looked away for a second..enough time for traffic to stop so I could crush the guy in front of me. My car had been out of the body shop for less than a week. My hood is all pushed up and my grill and bumper are demolished, but the car was still drivable. I made it to work and we worked all night and when we finished at 5AM, I couldn't make the 20-minute drive from downtown to my place in west Hollywood. I kept falling asleep and running off the freeway on the 101 and no amount of windows-down, radio-up, face-slapping, singing-as-loud-as-I-could would keep me awake. I exited on Sunset and pulled into a gas station and slept for a few hours.

So I actually feel lucky that I rear-ended that guy, when the alternative is much much worse.

This is a picture of two of the ridiculous cars in "Redline." The orange car in the foreground is a Saleen and gets 3 mpg.



This is a picture of the 2nd Unit DP, strapped to the hood of the car with a handheld Eyemo. No helmet.



This is a picture of the set medic, treating the DPs wounds after completing the hood-strapped, car-to-car shot.



This is a picture of the stunt coordinator mapping out a motorcycle stunt with leaves, twigs, rocks, and little squares of black tape.



This is a picture of Surly E.



This is a picture of the Corvette that got trashed in the course of shooting.



This is a picture of my newly scarred car after the last day of shooting.

Chess Boxing!

http://www.chessbase.com/newsdetail.asp?newsid=1348

My Ridiculous Rental Car

Last week my Subaru was crushed in the parking lot of the Camera House. The offending vehicle, I am happy to report, was the camera truck for the commercial I was working on at the time (Kay Jewelers, eww). It seems so fitting that it was the camera truck (our camera truck) was the very thing that wrecked my parked car. Something about my personal life getting the smackdown from my work life, an "unrewarding" work life, something like that. The production assistant driver punched the side of the truck to show how upset he was by this.

This is a picture of my poor Subaru, which was hit sideways in the rear-end area and shoved three feet sideways.



This is a closer-up version of the damage.



Now the Subaru is in the body shop and I'm driving a ridiculous rental car, the Chrysler Pacifica, a pimped-out SUV in Chrysler's newish "luxury" line (PT Cruiser, etc). The thing is so large I can barely wedge it into my parking space at home.

This is a picture of the monster.



This is a picture of my record-setting gasoline purchase.



The gf's Prius is at least ten times more efficient. But not as fun! No, not as fun! Besides, I will survive any accident now, yes I will...

The Big Boycott -or- Say No To AVP2

I've decided to boycott all remakes and sequels coming out of Hollywood for the next two years. These people need to be punished, really punished. It used to be that remakes and sequels were done only to megablockbusters, but these days if a movie turns a profit at all then it's going to get a sequel. Big Momma's House 2? Alien V. Predator 2? Remake of the Hitcher? Remake of Adventures in Babysitting? Love Boat's coming soon, you can count on it.

The gf insists I'm missing out on a complete life by not watching Superman Returns, but I have to take a pricipled stand on this one. I won't reward these executives for their complete lack of balls. Every year there are fewer and fewer films that don't come from some prexisting source material, be it a former version, a prequel, a famous novel, a Broadway musical, whatever.

The exception to this is Jackass 2, b/c it was shot on mini-DV for about 5 dollars...

I notice that Neil La Bute has remade the Wicker Man, BTW, and I fear the worst...

Big Muddy

Portland
Detroit
Long Island
NYC
Dyersberg, Tennessee
Oneata, Alabama
Pascagoula, Mississippi
New Orleans

Back in New Orleans again to finish up this State Farm commercial I've been working on. Because the French Quarter was settled on some of the highest ground in the city, there is an inverse relationship between the age of the buildings and how they weathered the storm. The 1800 buildings were fairly unscathed. Further afield the 1900 buildings did almost as well (the Garden District, etc). The areas furthest away, settled on the lowest ground, got their asses kicked.

Almost a year after Katrina and some of these areas still look like they got hit by a bomb. Gas stations with caved in roofs, Demolished strip malls, vacant streets, water marks on buildings 10-15 feet in the air, FEMA trailers everywhere. Each residence had a spray painted x on it with numbers filling in the quadrants of that x: number of residents, number of bodies found, number of dead animals, etc.

The French Quarter and financial districts are up and running but some of the suburbs still don't have electricity. Outside of the city center it's hard to see this "renewal" that's supposed to be happening. They are poor areas and they were ignored before and they are still being ignored and they will be ignored in the future.

Former population of Orleans parish and its environs: 1.1 mil
Current population: 200k

It kills me to see New Orleans like this. The place is f***ed up good.

It makes one want to have a drink or three and hey, New Orleans can still accomodate this urge.

This is a picture of the crew outside of Larry Flint's Barely Legal strip club at 4 in the morning. I have never felt so exploited in all my life. I return to a hotel room and pull out crumpled one-dollar bills from all pockets. Strippers, weird...



This is a picture of Sleepy E at the controls of a helicopter after the all-night debauch and one hour of sleep. Helicopters are always more squirrelly than you realize. He does not vomit.



This is a picture of some demolished homes. FEMA trailers in effect.



This is a picture of what I was looking at when my door flew open in midflight and wouldn't lock shut again. "Don't worry," said the pilot. "Not a big deal."



This is a picture of downtown. We were the first people to photograph the rebuilt Superdome in 35mm, which was completed the night before.



This is a picture of Cafe du Monde at 1 in the morning the next night. Being here again fills me with wist.



This is a picture of cafe au lait, 3 beignets, and ice water. Three dollars and fifty cents.



This is a picture of Sleepy E after his two-week beatdown. Note the classic Spud/Dominique era Hawks shirt and puffy-eyed optimism of the sleep deprived. You cannot hear the chirp of cicadas or see the winged cockroaches scuttling across the floor or feel the grimy press of humidity against your bare skin but you know these things are still there, of course they are.

Detroit Rock City

Didn't stay in D.Troit proper but somewhere northeast. Stayed in when I should have gone out: shenanigans at a Canadian strip club, director gets her bod licked onstage by Russian stripper, E sleeps back in the hotel.

This is a picture of the combo DVD/VHS player in the room:



This is a picture of the CD/alarm clock:



This is a picture of Ethernet and phone cables (no wifi):



Given this data can you pinpoint when this hotel came into existence?

The Whine Bar -or- Shut Yo Mouth

What is it about the non-complainer? What is it about this person? The stoic smile, the gentle reassurances, the fortitude, the boundless optimism. How in the do they keep their negativity in check? Or is it that they are able to shut it off at the source? How is this done? But how do they not rail constantly against the annoying injustices of existence? How I ask you? I try desperately to be like them, to keep my mouth shut, to detach, to cowboy up and be a real man who endures in silence, who never shows weakness. But still I cannot stop myself.

I complain pretty much constantly. I don't know when this started but that's where I'm at and that's where I've been at for a long time. There are two possible explanations for this: 1) The amount of complaining is not directly related to the amount of catharthis-requiring suffering, and so fills up time and space regardless of mood, and 2) That my life is unbelievably and consistently crappy.

When I first started doing camerawork there was always some older, bitter crewmember on set who grumbled about the rates, the food, the work, everything. "Why did he take the job, then?" I'd ask. "Put the guy out of his misery." How unpleasant to be around someone like this, a negativity oozer, a sour sack of bile. Yuck.

I have become this guy. Which is terrible, really, and selfish. I basically disallow too much complaining in my department but I'm free to whine as much as I want because it makes me feel better. It's what we do when faced with our own powerlessness. We complain. The complaining will not solve the problem, nor address the forces that created the problem to begin with, nor alter any decision or result in the future. It helps us to cope with our impotence and that is all. Can you believe that? How horrible.

They say committing adultery in your mind is just as sinful as the completing act itself. I wonder if the same thing goes with complaining...if I still experience a burning need to complain but do not--does this signify anything? Is this an improvement? Or is this just eliminating the symptoms of a much larger problem (alas, fixing the sweaty palms does not make a fever go away).

I wish I could be one of these people, one of these patient people who could stifle the need to rant about poor customer service and unappreciative employers and idiot policy. What would that be like? Or, even better, what would it be like to feel no ill will at all?

Perhaps it's God I need to find. Many of the poorest countries on earth (Haiti, etc.) are happier than wealthier countries b/c they have religion. Ah, to complain less, surely it is more difficult than giving up coffee. A noble goal but hardly realistic, I know this. God, this is horrible. I hate this. How I hate complaining all the time. Stop it. Shit.

On Tour

Portland is the first stop on a two-week, eight-city, post-Katrina State Farm commercial. This sounds fun but is actually kind of stressful b/c we are understaffed and there is a motherlode of unreliable equipment to marshal and I am the only one to blame really when things start to go bad.

I haven't been to Portland in many many years but it is beautiful and small and leafy and filled with bicyclists and young almost-indigent alt kids that bring back "My Own Private Idaho."

I love Portland.

This is a picture of Powell's.



This is a picture of Evelyn Waugh marketed as Chick Lit (!).



This is a picture of the Willamette (sp?).



This is a picture of the teddy bear that came with my swanky eco-friendly hotel.



This is a picture of my purchases (I have no business buying so many books and lugging them around without reading them).

Narratives of Wonderful Awfulness (Profane Album Version)

So, it turns out the g-friend's very good friend's boyfriend is a guy I know from a long time ago...someone I haven't seen in probably six years. He lost forty pounds of fat and gained fifteen of muscle in the interim, while I've bloated back up to over the 100 kilo mark (the shame!).

He said he thought he had saw me once about a year ago, walking across a parking structure in Koreatown to the Hollywood Video on Western. I said yeah, that was probably me, and then I told him the story of my near-fistfight in that particular store:

Here is the amazing narrative in case you forgot

J in turn recounted his own narrative from the exact same Hollywood Video on Western: a large raving black man in front of him was insulting the Chinese couple at the front of the line. "Fucken Chink blah blah go back home you fucken slanty-eyed blah blah." Then he honed in on the woman: "Your fucken Chink wife is an ugly ass whore blah blah." Apparently this went on for quite some time until the line clicked forward and the Chinese couple was able to leave.

The Chinese man elected not to engage, obviously, and they went home without incident (other than humiliation, of course). But for my friend, this event changed his life. "I don't want to be that guy who just stands there and takes it while some asshole berates his girlfriend. I'd want to kick his ass or at least hurt him in the process." J's girlfriend is Chinese American....so from that day on he started working out and now he's in incredible shape.

You might disagree with his reasoning, as to whether violence in that situation is appropriate or not...I actually think it is...the older I get the more I think physical violence is acceptable in certain circumstances. Call me a savage. But hey, sometimes you have to engage, like it or not, and when that happens you better be ready. (I encourage people to post their age-of-majority-and-older fighting tales here...)

But he's in great shape now thanks to this altercation.

If find that many good things in my life have come as a result of tremendous awfulness. I never would have lived in Asia and traveled had my life in Washington State not been a total piece of shit. I never would have become such a Productive Machine had I not wasted my years in college and not "felt behind." I never would have developed such dogged discipline if I had been actually able to succeed without really trying in high school and college.

"You should find that raving black guy," I said, "and thank him for changing your life."

"Yeah, I should, shouldn't I?"

Moral: Don't go to Hollywood Video.

Fife Milton Junior Soccer Club

First of all, the Americans got crushed again today and went home with their tails between their legs. People can blame the loss on questionable officiating, but Ghana simply outplayed them, just like every other team in this World Cup. The Americans were pathetic, really, and scored only one goal in three games (the goal against Italy was put in by one of the Italians). I don't even know why I care; nobody else does. Besides, it's cooler that Ghana advanced (the only African team to do so); they are clearly excited to be there and are calling half-day holidays so they definitely deserve it.

So, the question is: at what point does soccer become uncool? I played youth soccer up into high school and it always seemed fairly popular. There were four teams in our area for our relative age groups: Jaws (Raq's team--these days it would be spelled "Jawz" no doubt), Sounders II (a "sequel" to the Seattle NASL franchise), Sounders III (a sequel of a sequel, my team), and the lowly Falcons. All kids realize that kicking a ball up and down a field and running around is tremendous fun. And there was--and is--a great turnout for youth soccer, before kids realize that it's uncool, I guess.

But I'm not sure when and where this happens. Once you enter high school being a soccer player is about as cool as tennis...or cross country...or any of the other non-gladiator sports. There's football, and then, to a lesser extent, there is basketball, and then there is everything else. At least that's the way it was in our school.

Club soccer was in the fall but JV soccer was in the spring, so when I was a freshman I decided to forgo baseball for the soccer team. Even though I had played as a defenseman for the previous five years or so, the coach put me up as a striker in our defensive 4-4-2 formation. I was totally ineffectual. Where my height was an advantage on defense it made it more difficult to handle the ball in tight quarters or in attacking mode. I wasn't fast enough to outrun defenses and we were so bad that our midfield just hung back and packed it in on D, so there was never an attacking midfield...it was just me and the other striker waiting for a long ball that we'd eventually bungle and lose.

But for some weird reason I never told the coach that I had played 8 years of club soccer, first in the midfield, then in the defensive third. I was outspoken and a little bit of an asshole; so it seems really bizarre that I wouldn't have relayed this crucial bit of information to the coach. I didn't score a single goal the whole season and I started to hate soccer.

It's interesting how these little events can dramatically alter the course of one's sporting life. Get cut as a 7th grader and you might not ever play again. You're off-track and the team becomes a little gang and it's harder than ever for you to get back on track...even though it's only 8th grade. They know the offenses, you don't...etc..they know each other...So the JV coach probably just thought I sucked, and that was that. As a sophomore the better players moved up and played varsity. I stunk it up on JV for another season and then I quit. Soccer was suddenly unfun.

And that was that.

Moral: Speak up or have your talents squandered on JV for two years.

Now I'm getting itchy to kick the ball around again. I have a friend who plays in a rec league and I'm thinking about going out and recapturing my youth, experiencing those glory days anew, and pullin hammies in the process.

Will Middlebrow Ever Blog Again?

A. I'd like to think so
B. Not if he can help it
C. Them're purdy long odds, I reckon, given the evidence
D. If he responds to guilt, which he has in the past
E. Yes, but only fortmonthly
F. What's blogging?
G. All of the above
H. None of the above
I. Some of the above

World Cup and the Decline of Productivity

The 2006 FIFA World Cup is upon us and I am getting nothing done. These are Idle Times for the film business in LA (but not in NY for some reason), and I was hoping to use these weeks to catch up on life in general, but I shelled out for cable TV for the first time in my entire life and now I'm up at 6AM every day to watch the games. This is better than the 11:30 pm/4:30 am slots from the 2002 World Cup in Korea and Japan...but it's still wreaking havoc on the system. I am in a bizarre 2-Naps-per-day mode to accomodate the early start times...

The Americans look terrible, the Japanese look terrible, the English look terrible, even the Brazilians look mediocre. So far only Argentina looks good. Four out of the five African countries lost already (Ivory Coast, Angola, Togo, and Ghana). Tunisia plays tomorrow against Saudi Arabia, I think. So I'm putting all of my hopes in with the Mexicans...and my plan is to go back into my neighborhood and watch the game in a local bar surrounded by passionate Latinos who actually care about the sport.

Here's a story in The Economist about why the World Cup is far superior to the Olympics.

Reading Aloud Before Humans

On the 25th I'm going to be reading some short fiction (my own) in front of a paying audience of strangers. Urp. This is my first time to do this. It's part of a larger monthly "semi-literary salon" that will feature of 20-minute clip of my movie and live music from The Santiago Steps (the guys who did many songs in the film).

Even though the fiction read was my idea I am terrified of this and thought I might entreat the SLC contingent for a lil advice.

BTW, I will go SHORT AND FUNNY with my selection.

Thanks for listening...

Egoyan's Exotica & the Ephemerality of Taste -or- In a World of Temptation, Obsession is the Deadliest Desire

"Forbidden desires and dangerous intrigue generate sizzling heat in this erotic thriller! At a sexy strip club called Exotica, three strangers -- an obsessive man, an erotic table dancer, and the club's mysterious D.J. -- share much more than is apparent at first glance! As their secret passions grow, they become more deeply entangled in an inescapable web of jealousy, deceit, and revenge! The powerfully seductive hit EXOTICA is gripping entertainment -- you won't be able to take your eyes off it!"

For the last ten years I've enjoyed pointing out this movie and saying, "No, it's good. Really. No, really. It's magnificent, in fact. It's in my top three of all time. Yes, I'm being serious. Trust me. No, really. No, I'm not on drugs."

It was December of 1994 and I had just moved to Seattle and was unemployed and living in the U-District and going to the movies about once a day. I probably would never have seen this film had I not exhausted most of the other choices. I knew nothing about the film - I hadn't even seen a poster - I just noticed that it was playing at the Metro and decided to go. So I went and was totally blown away by it. It was one of those truly transformative filmgoing experiences, which, at the time, I thought were no longer possible (already well on my way to becoming permanently cynical). It was an art film, definitely, but it was far more accessible than his pretentious and impenetrable earlier work (Speaking Parts, Family Viewing, The Adjuster). Later Egoyan would make "The Sweet Hereafter" and then disappear back into obscurity, but after spending 90 minutes with Exotica Egoyan was suddenly my favorite director.

Perhaps it was his cool, detatched Canadian sensibilites, or his tightly wound plotting, or his hyperreal dialogue. I don't know. I was 24 and fully in control of my faculties, so I have no excuse.

The revelation? Exotica is, in fact, quite terrible.

I just sat down and watched it for the first time in about five years. I had to fight myself not to shut it off. It's that bad. Actually, there are still some good things going on here, but the bad things are beyond atrocious. I watched the whole thing with my mouth hanging open. How could I have been so wrong? Am I smarter or stupider or just different? Just what is going on? Are there other examples of this in my life..where I have felt so strongly about a thing only to reverse field a couple of years later? I could see people doing this on political issues, but on a film? Well, obviously the film has stayed the same so I've gone through some pretty severe changes without realizing it.

Exotica in the 90s v. Now

90s: Arty
Now: Pretentious

90s: Complex Interwoven Plot
Now: Contrived and Unbelievable Connexions Between Characters

90s: Flat and Hyperreal Mamet/Hartley Dialogue Delivery
Now: Bad and Uninvolving Performance

90s: Creative Framing
Now: Bad Cinematography

90s: Cool Flashbacks and Flashforwards!
Now: Clunk, Clunk, Clunk...

90s: Interesting, Writerly Speeches
Now: Do People Talk LIke This In Canada?

90s: Intellectual
Now: Oh, please...

90s: The Director is the Author of the Film
Now: The Director Should Stay the Fuck out of the Way B/C He's All Over Every Frame of This Thing and That's All I Can Think About While Watching It.

Monkey Ownership

Yesterday we finished up a 2-day Outkast video. Outkast consists of two men from Atlanta, Big Boi and Andre 3000. Andre is clearly the more talented of the two, the hitmaker who penned "Hey Ya" and "Roses." These days they record everything separately (and tour separately too, I think) and their albums are double albums (one of Big Boi's songs and one of Andre 3000's). Unfortunately, our video was a Big Boi video and although it had some good things going for it it was lame in the end. Here is a picture of a TV person (a little person told to dance around with a TV over his head):



What I really want to talk about, though, is the actress with the monkey in the lunch line. The woman with the Paris Hilton nose and demeanor who held a collared pet monkey in her arms like a baby. "That totally offends me," I said to my assistant, "That thing is a wild animal and I hope it goes Monkey Shines on her." My assistant dragged me off to one side and told me that he had hooked up with this woman in Las Vegas and that she had taken a year off of work to domesticate the baby monkey, which is what they tell you to do when you're raising a monkey as a pet. Apparently, she was part of a reality show called "paradise Hotel", which had a lowbrow hook-up-or-get-kicked-off hook. "I don't care. That thing is a wild animal and I hope it fangs her ass."

This isn't the first time I've seen a young woman carrying around a monkey, Paris Hilton style. I thought toy dogs were bad enough, but now it seems like it's a fashionable race to own the exotic. Fur coats are gauche but jungle animals are okay, i guess. Grr.

The Chipsters

Last Saturday night I went into the Coffee Bean on Sunset and Fairfax and noticed a group of blue-suited Russian men smoking by a table where their friend was playing a young blonde woman in chess. The blonde wasn't wearing any makeup and her hair was pulled back kind of severely but she was pretty and she had that look, that SoCal look (or SoCal Russian look). Quite a few people were staring at them, because people have nothing to do but stare when they sit in the Coffee Bean, or because it is unusual to a young woman locked in pitched chess battle with some old Russian businessman dude. Two young guys in their twenties wandered over and watched from close range, too close. One was a white boy with shoulder length boy band hair and distressed fashion jeans with button-up shirt and a designer leather jacket. The other was an afroed light-skinned black man with a DJ aesthetic. They stood over the game and watched, smiling, as the young woman eventually lost. She shook the hand of the businessman and his Russian friends and took off.

Then the white boy sat down. A timer appeared and they played speed chess. Ah, I thought, so the Backstreet Boy considers himself a chess prodigy. He lost, eventually, but he played well and fought hard. Then the African American dude sat down. I think he beat thte businessman. Then I left.

Sunday they were there also. The young woman came up to their table wearing high heels and white hot pants, fully made up. Her hair was in one long rope, Lara Croft style. The short shorts were so short that pretty much everyone outside on the patio was staring, which is saying a lot for LA. "Ah ha," I thought, "You make your assumptions cuz this woman here will smoke alla yo asses in speed chess!" It was so weird to see her and her young friends dressed like this. It was like they were a family of genius aliens and they were dressing up like Sunset Strip-going humans in order to fit in. This was the intelligence they had received from reconnaissance. This is what humans wore at the coffee shop. This is normal.

So weird. But cool. I love these kids, who have chess battles with old russian dudes before they hit the club and get trashed...Which is it? They are good at chess. But then they are hipsters too.

The are Chipsters.

Worldfest Debriefing

Talking to Dr. Write the other day made me realize that I never did post on this subject. And for that I apologize, although my rant-avoidance reasoning was honorable, I think. Who wants to listen to a Sleepy E rant when they can be doing mental prep for World Cup?

This is the deal: Worldfest is the vanity publisher of film festivals. Worldfest is a mid-level competitive festival that has more categories than should be allowed by law (I think Best Medical Commercial was one). And each category has five or six or seven awards in it (grand prize, jury prize, platinum, gold, silver, bronze, etc). So there are a ton of awards going out, so many that they really lose all meaning. So they invite the hundreds of award winners out to Houston, and they try to program premieres because they know everyone brings associates and friends and family to their premiere. Then they charge $100/head to go to the awards banquet and they pack in as many people as they can and get stingy with the wine. Add to that a submission fee that is basically double what most festivals charge and it starts to look like a little business.

Not that film festivals need to be non-profit in the economical sense (although it's interesting that 90% of foreign festivals are free to enter whereas 95% of domestic festivals charge a fee ($40-$100). But all of the Worldfest revenue stream seems to be internal, via the filmmakers themselves (and their posse). No Houston locals were even aware that there was a festival going on. There was no advertising or coverage in the print media or on television or radio even, it seemed. So there were no walk-in ticket sales, really. Just filmmakers and friends watching each others films. Weird.

And slightly disturbing. I was in a foul mood most of the festival when I learned what was going on. But only because certain expectations (cool art house theaters, newly discovered international cinema, alternative shorts, a spirit of indyness and congratulation) weren't met. Instead it's a transaction, which is: I pay them my money and they give me an award that I can put on my poster. There's even downloadable laurel leaves and trophies on their website, which makes total sense. They are a wholesaler of awards. A clearing house. If your film needs an award, go to Worldfest, because in this particular case Worldfest's obscurity works for it (nobody knows about Worldfest, but they also don't know that it's BS either!).

Did I forget to mention the cash bar at the $100/head dinner?

Now that I know what it is I'm fine with it. Nobody would ever premiere at Worldfest unless they hadn't got rejected everywhere else. That's why they don't program hits from other festivals! Because no one would bring their posse to Houston if they had a legitimate festival run going on!

Sorry if that sounds negative. The cool thing was that the premiere went really well and we had a big local turnout and a lot of old-time players got together and there was kind of a reunion of sorts among them. It was great to premiere in Houston for this reason. Mark the recluse came from Boulder and one player came from San Francisco and the folks from Gig Harbor and my friend and composer came from Seattle. So it was cool to hang with everyone in Houston, but, I'm sorry, the film festival is a joke.

The problem is that Way of the Puck isn't getting programmed anywhere. At all. It's kind of embarrassing, really. I continue to send out, but it continues to get rejected.

Here are some guesses why:

1. It's not an "issue movie." It's not "socially conscious", whatever that means.
2. I'm not down with the Festival Mafia and the Gatekeeping Cabal.
3. I consistently turn in my stuff right at the deadline instead of before.
4. It sucks.
5. The beginning doesn't grab people.
6. Air hockey is trivial.
7. It's impossible to overturn people's expectations about the triviality of air hockey in the first five minutes of the movie.
8. Sharpie on a DVD face.
9. Everyone is on drugs.
10. No movie stars.

At the end of the day Worldfest is actually cool because at least I was able to have a premiere at all! Actually, this works against me now too...b/c I want to make changes but I've already premiered and I have a shelf life and the date stamp on my box is fast approaching and soon I will wilt and smell bad and have to go in the disposal.

Ah well. New projects beckon. Onward!

Weird Sleep & the Efficiency Expert

One day last week l woke up at 6am, then studied till about 11am, then slept from 11am to 4pm, then studied from 4pm to 12am, then slept from 12am to 5am, then studied from 5am to 8:30am, then slept from 8:30am to 10am, then stayed awake till about 4pm, then slept from 4pm to 7pm, then studied from 7pm till 1am, before getting back on a more normal sleep schedule. This was an extreme example, but I do tend to have wacky sleep habits, sometimes voluntarily, sometimes not.

The wackiest of all sleep habits usually occurs when I am simultaneously in Writing Mode and Intense Work Mode. Since my best creative hours occur in the morning, I try to skew my day so that I am waking up and putting in a few hours of writing work before the work-work commences. Since I often have to leave at 6am, this means rising in the middle of the night to tap away on the computer. Things get really insane...usually with me coming home after a 12-hour day and trying to fall asleep immediately at around 8pm, then setting my alarm for 1am and waking up and walking around the block, trying to write from 1:30am to 5:30am. Results vary from day to day, and I can't keep this up for more than a couple of weeks.

But this has lead to the latest discovery: Full Bore does not always equal Most Efficient. In the past, productivity was directly hardwired to coffee consumption. But I'm starting to learn that there are different kinds of productivity and different states of mind and different ways to reach them. Less Sleep does not mean More Productive, no way...Sometimes it does, sure...I find that five or six hours at night, followed by an afternoon nap, then a once-a-week Sleep-In Day seem to maximize the hours. Less sleep than that and I get dumb. More sleep than that and I'm using up valuable work time.

So I'm thinking about doing a self-study for the next three months, making daily notes about diet, exercise, sleep, mood, and how they tie into productivity. Hopefully, certain trends will reveal themselves and I can get a better idea how to listen to my mind and body to maximize results. Then again, I may just find that some days I'm inspired and some days I'm not and it has nothing to do with anything...

Hmmm.

No Phone

Yesterday midnight Z and I started our 2-week No Phone/No Email Lifestyle Test. This morning we went to Paper Source in Beverly Hills and I dropped $80 on stationery. It's true, I have a paper fetish and I like to shop for office supplies when depressed, but Paper Source takes this vice to a whole new level. I love the idea of paying $1 for one sheet of paper. Hilarious. Now if only the quality of my words can live up to this level of decadence.

The saleswoman at the Paper Source totally fawned over our plan when I revealed what we were doing. She asked how long we'd been going out and confirmed that this was a great way to "jump-start any romance" (feel free to interpret that however you please). Then she congratulated Z on the brilliant idea (yes, another gender-based assumption), a credit which is still disputed among us (along with the absurd idea that E is actually romantic somehow).

So, still on Day 1, the Importance of Planning has already become paramount. Last-minute cancellations and flaking aren't really possible...and spontaneity becomes a lot harder too. Not only do you have to make the plan; you have to stick to the plan. And if you can't stick to the plan, then you need to drive over there and explain yourself (or send a courier for $15). So the dates will have more buildup and more importance, something to look forward to (because there is more at stake if it falls thru). This is the idea, anyway. We shall see how it goes.

In the meantime, I'll try to craft a worthwhile letter every day for fourteen days (or until my limited supply of stationery runs out).

The Sisyphean Mound

First of all, welcome back all. I haven't been writing much lately--finishing the movie was the main culprit, then the gf, then, well...then just life, I guess.

This was the main shocker: that the finishing of the movie wouldn't provide an abundance of free time. That existence was just going to be filled with other things. I have a list of 30 or so tasks that need to be accomplished before I can catch up in life. And these are neither long-range nor abstract goals, either, but concrete things that need to be done in the next couple of days...and which, of course, will just replaced by other things. This list does not seem to diminish. Ever.

And I am unmarried! Childless! Renting! Healthy!

I know I am not unique in this regard, but when did this list turn from three or four things into thirty? Even just two years ago I feel that I might have had one or two things to do on a day off and the rest of the afternoon and evening could be filled with whatever. Now there's just this interminable list and the backlog of responsibilities. Ah, the years of college, when weeks could go by without accomplishing anything, when one could read at random and laze about.

On a side note, when did children start drinking coffee? We were filming at a classroom at this inner-city junior high and when were finished the production left our starbucks and bagels there and the students were all sitting around sipping java. Huh? I do not approve of this behavior. Does that make me a curmudgeon? Whatever happened to juice?

Good Night and Good Luck

The Front Porch is going offline for awhile....but will resurface at a private new address....

For members only!

More and more I realize that I cannot say what I really want to here. All of my scathing Hollywood stories need to come out somehow...somewhere else, I think.

Thanks for reading the Front Porch. It has been a good ride.

Send me an email if you are interested in the new location.

See ya.

Fun Times in the LBC

"When you in the LBC lookin for a fly car, come to Cal Worthington and tell'im Snoop Dogg sentcha!"
--old Cal Worthington radio spot

So Saturday the NFF and I headed down to SanDiegofied, gentrified Long Beach for fun and adventures. The LBC has more to offer than one might think. And LBC doesn't stand for Long Beach Crips, dammit! (although it used to, perhaps). We have to reclaim our language from the sinister gang element, yall! So Z and I created our to-do list and got on the cloggy 405, trying to navigate her highbrow golfcart hybrid into a nonexistent carpool lane as black rainclouds congealed overhead.

To Do List:
1. Acres of Books
2. Oysters
3. Aquarium
4. Movie

My eighth year in Los Angeles and I finally made it to Acres of Books, the only decent used bookstore in the megalopolis. Huge and musty and disorganized with secret rooms...stacks reaching to unreachable vaulted ceilings...shelves leaning at 30 degree angles under which one must tread softly, lest he get buried alive by literature.

For E:

Midaq Alley, Naguib Mahfouz
Pass the Butterworms, Tim Cahill
Created in Darkness By Troubled Americans, McSweeneys
Greasy Lake & Other Stories, T. Coraghessan Boyle
(all male, it has been noted)

For Z:
Lizard, Banana Yoshimoto
Female Travel Narratives (forget the author)

Next was King's Oyster Bar on Pine St. (where I took the folks when they were down last Halloween). This is a picture of that obscure object of desire:



This is a picture of E waiting expectantly:



This is a picture of gluttony:



This is a picture of Z's Cadillac Margarita:



This is a picture of a 3000-calorie brick of bread pudding. Yum!



This is a picture of E and Z in a manic Post-Pudding Coma!



Afterward we staggered down to the pier, trying desperately to stay awake. This is a picture of E in all of his pink-shirted glory:



Aquarium? Some other time.

Movie? Hmmm.

All in all, a good time was had in the LBC. You can even take the blue line there! (Or Ghetto Blue, as it is sometimes referred). Do not underestimate the LBC. Visit your home away from home. Visit the LBC.

Epistolating, Vol. 1

The NFF and I have decided to take a two-week break from the tyranny of modern communication devices. This will never do out in the real world, of course, so we will confine our little experiment to our little world and the two inhabitants inside of it.

These are the rules:

1. No telephoning (land lines are telephones too!)
2. No emailing
3. No texting
4. Telegraph okay, if you can find it
5. In person visits allowed--encouraged, in fact.
6. Letters are the preferred mode of communication
7. Letters must be handwritten
8. Letters must be worthy of their permanence
9. Letters may not overlap (waiting for the other person is part of the whole deal)
10. Quitting is not okay.

And, oh yeah...

11. Blogging is not a modern COMMUNICATION device, per se.
12. No faxing. Faxing should be made illegal, anyway.

Of course, I immediately tried to turn it into a competition, with rewards and punishments and rankings, but since this was her idea I have to defer... :(

We're not sure what this is going to accomplish but I will be happy to blog about it as it happens.

Glad to be back in the blogosphere. NFF is harassing me about my recent non-blogging so hopefully I can make up for lost time. What's going on w/ Ostertag? I step away for a few weeks and all hell breaks loose.

Ballot Box Stuffing and Lagniappery

Sorry to use the Front Porch as a film-based propaganda page, but I must. In conjunction with Worldfest, a low-rez trailer from "Way of the Puck" is showing on the 24-7 Show page:

http://www.247show.com/watch-videos-online.cfm/cid/29/sid/232

Ratings are derived from votes, so I encourage everyone to vote and vote often. Five stars, yo! How can I buy your vote?

Of course, a better resolution teaser, trailer, and other lagniappe are available on the WOTP website:

http://wayofthepuck.com

Can lagniappe be pluralized?

Shout out to Boonasty for getting me off my a** and having Worldfest link to the WOTP site.

Keep on truckin,

The Management

March Madness

I have been remiss, I'm sorry. I've been Busy Beyond Belief, which is no excuse, I know, I have been in Read-Only Mode. I have been visiting the blogosphere but not participating. There is working and sleeping and then working and sleeping and then a little bit of stressing and then working and sleeping some more.

Some day it will all end.

There are new digs in West Hollywood.
There are fifteen 12- to 14 hour days in a row.
There is the impending film festival and the last-minute effort to meet a deadline.
There is the trip to Vegas, which ends poorly.
There is the sickness, and the fever, and the vomiting.
There is the mail piling up, piling.
There is the myth of Sisyphus and all that junk.
There are the flakes and the AWOLs and the dealbreakers.
There is the malfunctioning iPod.
There is the new female friend on the scene.
There are a lot of things.

Air Hockey Documentary

I apologize for my absence. I have been reading thy blogs faithfully; although I do confess that I am having trouble reading and making comments (do not know if this is me or blogger.com at fault). Things are busy beyond belief, so busy that I do not have the time or energy to report of them here. Alas. There are many good stories to report.

We are getting the PR machine rolling and rolling good. Check out this article on Way of the Puck in the Houston Chronicle:

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/life/hoffman/3736440.html

I too shall be going to Texas soon. Texas is a Big Country, yes. Never been to Austin, envious of those literary types who have been playing there. Hm. Richard Linklater's animated adaptation of a Philip K. Dick book is coming out soon. Forget the name of it. "A Scanner Darkly" perhaps? For all those who haven't seen "Waking Life" check it out. "A Scanner Darkly" uses the same technique. Rotoscoped animated footage of live-action DV master..."Waking Life" is wonderful and we have high hopes for the Dick adaptation! All hail Austin, though they rejected me at SXSW, Philistines...

Oh yes, I almost forgot...in the first act of bloggy self-censorship, I've deleted the maudlin "Way of the Quitter" post written during the Dark Times of Way of the Puck's Uncertain Future. I've retained the text on my computer and it will remain available to any and all who request it privately. Unfortunately, it was coming up on Google in the number 3 slot; something e just can't have. The spin doctors would never approve.

Surely you understand.

Keep on bloggin,

The Management

Next week: Scarification v. Tattoos

Calling All Lurkers

Lately I keep coming across unknown lurking members of the Front Porch readership. I don't think I gave these people the link....either they stumbled across it or they Googled it or I don't know what. There is the old flame who contacted me recently (because someone else's BLOG linked to mine and my website...who could that be?), there're the dudes in New Hampshire who are in the movie who told me they knew about my movie's success because they saw it mentioned on the blog, there's the friend of a friend who reads it (to find out what is going on).

So it seems the Front Porch readership goes beyond the SLC Contingent, which is both interesting and disturbing.

I encourage all lurkers to come forward and say hello, to acknowledge that this is a dialogue and not a monologue. Come off the sidewalk and onto the Porch. Would you rather be invisible or have the power to fly? Fly! We want flyers here, not lurkers. Come forward. Come forward and claim your prize.

WOTP To Win Houston Award

Learned today that the movie is guaranteed to win one of the top awards at Houston-Worldfest. Now they've comped my whole trip and stay and festival passes and everything. HA!