Bon Voyage

Hey, kids!  I just dropped my parents off at the airport as they are headed to Florida to start their Carribean cruise.  They'll be gone for 10 days, which I'm sure the doggies are going to love.  Though early by a few months, this cruise marks my parents 35 years together.  35 years... Wow.

Anyhoo, I hope they have fun and are safe and I love them.  The End.

Robert Downer Jr.

Hey, kids.  I'm feeling pretty blah today.  I don't know why.  I figure it must be a combination of things.  My sleep has been weird the past few days.  I've slept plenty of hours.  I'm not an insomniac again or anything.  I just haven't been sleeping well, I guess.  I've been tossing and turning and waking up and half-waking up and when I actually wake up, I feel pretty tired and awful.

If I have something that I absolutely have to do, I can get it going.  But I still feel kinda shitty around all of it.

I think maybe it's because I can feel things closing around me.  Not literally because believe me I'd move away from falling objects.  It's more like, graduation is coming up and I don't feel like I've done anything since I actually took my last class.  And I've got this deadline in my head, June 1st, where I think I've got to move to L.A. by then or I've already failed.  And then I'm scared of when I get there and if things will happen for me.  I know how I am, I can't be that way up there.

I can't waste the time that I do down here.  I'll need to make money to afford all the stuff you guys all have to already.  I have to get off my ass, daily, motherfucker.  And then it's like, "Oh shit.  Is the film business gonna start to feel like a job?  Am I gonna hate it because it's gonna be so demanding?"  I don't know the answers.  I'd like to say no.  But if I'm not doing what I want to do, I don't know if I'll have the patience and the willpower to do some shitty things.  This isn't gonna be a hobby anymore.  Wow, that sucks. 

A new place, a new way of living, a (or a series of) new job(s).  It's scary.  All 3 things at once too.  But I can't stay here in San Diego.  The work just isn't here.  It might be bigger in 5 or 10 years but I can't fathom the thought of getting a 9 to 5 and waiting it out, while making movies on the weekends. 

I just used to look up there with so much hope but sometimes, like tonight, I just can't see it.  It's gotta just be the fear of the unknown and the anxiety and the nerves are normal.  But sometimes I feel so much worse because I don't think I am the go-getter, the bread winner, the guy who makes his own breaks, and keeps moving forward in a positive way.

I mean, every job I've ever had I've kept at a distance.  I definitely made some great friends but the job itself has never meant anything.  Here's a brief list:

Phone Surveys (3 months): Just needed to pay off a ring I bought my high school girlfriend (stupid fuck, her and me).  Got out of there first excuse I could think of.

Staff Pro (2 years): At first it was, "I get to watch concerts!"  After a while, I hated doing concerts, so I didn't.  A lot of people really suck.  Go to any concert, you'll see.  Then it was conventions.  Mostly boring, luckily just on the weekends.  Pay was pretty low.

The Convention Center (3 years, 4 months): At first I thought that the hours and the pay was better, and they were.  I had to pay off my car too.  More office political bullshit, boring posts, exposure to bad weather.  But it was only on the weekends.  Paid off my car.  Then came my film classes.  Had to cut down my hours.  Didn't make any money, well, hardly any.  The last year or so, I hated being there, everyday I went in.  And I wasn't particularly shy about that.  Then I graduated and quit the next day.

See, so I worry about things getting like that.  I know that film is supposed to bemy field and whatnot but will it wear me down and get corrupted like everything else?  I hope not.  I don't have any assurance that it won't.  I'm probably just rambling at this point so feel free to tune out.

I just hope that when I get to L.A. that things will make sense, that I will see a path to the top.  Because right now all I see are dreams and figments of things I want to believe are possible, and all the odds that tell me how hard it is.  And I'm doubting my ability to fight because sometimes I don't feel like I want it enough or as much as the people I see doing so much more.  Maybe I'll just get lucky.  I have in the past.  Maybe things will just magically work.  It's possible.

And then there's my love life...

Oh fuck, I'm not getting into that.

This one's been kind of a downer, kids.  I would apologize but I won't.  This is where I'm at, today, right now.  Blah...

Der Stuff

Hey, kids!  Last night I saw Grindhouse by Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino so I'm gonna tell you what I thought about it and some other stuff.

First of all, let me say that I LOVED the fake movie trailers that both preceed and fell between the 2 films.  The trailer for Thanksgiving can be found in my comments.  Each of them would make entertaining films of absurd and satiric content.

That being said, I would've rather watched any of those films than "Planet Terror" (Rodriguez) and "Death Proof" (Tarantino).

I am a fan of both directors.  I liked almost everything Rodriguez has ever done (exceptions being the Spy Kids movies and Once Upon A Time In Mexico) and I've loved every Tarantino film.  So this only added to my disappointment.

Now I know that these to movies are supposed to be bad, a la 70's-B exploitation films.  And all the scenes you've seen in the trailers for Grindhousevery much live up to that wacky slapstick violence and punchline dialogue.  The problem is in everything else.  I feel like things are very well setup by the filmmakers but they aren't followed through.  The amount of dialogue also felt indulgent rather than satirical or ironic, which is how I expected to feel about it all.  There were definitely moments where I went, "YES!" with glee but those moments were often followed by minutes and minutes of "Get on with it!"

There were moments in both films where I was like, "Shut the fuck up and do something!"  Seriously, shut the fuck up.  I never thought I'd say that, especially during a Tarantino film.  I know that B movies are supposed to be bad but these two directors are so much better that I didn't figure they'd put form above content.  In other words, I expected them to make great B movies, and not movies that are just as shitty as they were back then.

In "Planet Terror," you've got zombies and they're killing people and people are killing them.  That's cool.  I'm down with that.  But there were too many moments where the characters were just going places and not getting things done (i.e. discovering the cause of the zombies, or figuring out how to kill them).  When those moments came, the content was good.  But far too much time was wasted.  It didn't help that there was about 10 minutes where the sound went out in the theater.  I couldn't tell at first if that was part of the show.  But I don't think we missed anything that would've corrected any of these issues.

In "Death Proof," Tarantino spends about an hour setting up a confrontation between these 3 chicks and Kurt Russell's character, making the audience wonder, "Who is this guy" and then "Why is he doing this?"  Then all of a sudden the movie becomes about these 4 other chicks and Kurt Russell becomes very much secondary (or fifthdary?).  And we never get the answers to the previous questions, that are set up pretty fucking well.  And the dialogue between all of these chicks is hardly worthy of Tarantino, again because he could've made agreat B movie out of this.  After all the set up, I don't give a shit about anybody but Kurt Russell!  Hello?!

And then the missing reels... Uuugh.  I read on IMDB that films of the grindhouse era didn't actually have missing reels so RR and QT put them in (or took them out, whatever) for their own indulgent reasons.  It really was a bit more frustrating than anything, as I'm sure it would be if it really happened during a real film.  They cut out scenes that would be visually satisfying and had plot implications to boot.  Argh.

And that's all I have to say about that.

In other news, have you seen this Major League Direct TV ad with Charlie Sheen?  It kills me.  Kills me like death, suicide, stab in the gut bad.  If you're paying attention, which Direct TV hopes you are not, Charlie (as Rick Vaughn) throws his first pitch ("Juuuuuuuuuuuuust a bit outside...") to a left-handed batter, number 39.  Then they cut to the Charlie of today, plus the horrible wrinkle-removal effect.  Then they cut back to what should be the same at-bat and Viola!  The batter is now right-handed and wearing number 48.  It fucking disturbs me. 

All of this could've been corrected digitally.  They should have flipped the first batter and changed his number.  Then the only sign that something is amiss is the catcher's glove hand.  But no, they're dumbshits and that's inexcusable.

Finally, I hate basketball coaches.  I find something very wrong with men in suits, yelling at people, be they players or referees.  It's also ridiculous because they are constantly yelling, all game.  What the fuck are you yelling about?!  Is this a Little League game and one of the players is your kid?!  Shut the fuck up.  It's only made worse with female basketball coaches.  I've got no problem with women athletes, nor women coaches, refs, etc. but that shit is horrendous looking.  Basketball should be played without coaches, or coaches should wear uniforms or sweatshirts or something.  Otherwise, they just look like grumpy-ass old people.

That's it.  Good-bye!   :-P  Pbbbbbbbbbbbbth!!!

That's it. I have had it.

Hey, kids.  Just wanted to let you all know that I've made some tough choices about my life and they are as follows:

-I'm quitting the movies.   Yes, technically, I haven't really started but I realized that I suck and I should probably die instead.

-I decided that I wasn't cool with dying yet, so I looked for other things I can do.

-I'm going to join the circus!  I saw an ad on Craig's List (and you guys know how I love the CL) and there was an opening for a juggling, high-wire artist.  I answered and they called back and they want me to start immediately.

-Apparently, they also would like me to try it blindfolded.  I wasn't prepared for this and I had to decline.

-I went back on the CL and saw an ad for a latin male dancer.  I called the number and they wanted me to start immediately.  However, at the end of the call, they asked for my last name and when they heard it, they hung up.  I assume that means I'm fired.

-I went back on CL and answered an ad by a BBW who's into S&M seeking an SBM.  Since I'm not good with acronyms, I called the number.  I got more details and immediately hung up.  My phone rang 2 seconds later, I answered and again hung up.  She's pushy.

-Then my phone rang again and I thought it was the same as the previous call.  But it wasn't.  It was a telemarketer.  After buying everything he was selling, I asked if they had any openings.  He said they did and then he put me through to his manager.  His manager answered and offered me his [the manager's] job.  I accepted and then I heard what sounded like a window opening and then a scream that faded away as the phone hit the floor.

-I figured that that was probably a bad sign so I decided not to go there.  I looked up and there was a pop-up ad for mail-order-husbands in Cambodia.  I clicked on it and it turned out that it was fake.  It was really a website for mail-order-husbands in Turkmenistan.  Still intrigued, I kept clicking ahead.  The pay was actually pretty reasonable (4 dollars a day plus chickens) and from what I could see of the women's eyes, I could quite possibly (fingers crossed) end up with a Grade-D+ hottie for a wife!

-I was also able to secure a job as a goat wrestler's apprentice.  Hopefully, that will lead to a lucrative career.

-So, to make a long story short, I ship off tomorrow.  From all accounts Manoush, my bride, has a lovely personality.  I'm not sure if they have computers there, let alone the internet, MySpace, cell phones, cheeseburgers, towels, healthcare, Television, or sanitary drinking water.  But if they do, I'll let you all know how it's going. 

Take Care.  

Be good. 

Namaste.

-Aaron