Pickin' Bones

Hey kids!  Now that school is all over and I finished my Christmas shopping (in less than 4 hours, beat that!), it's time for me to get back to what I do best: Gripe about shit that doesn't really concern me!

-Retro Bullshit Music- This is perpetrated most apparently by Christina Aguilera.  Her new album sounds like some horrible 30s-style nonsense.  Even worse, it kinda sounds like "Mambo No.5".  LET'S MOVE THE FUCK ON!  It's 2006 and we're trying to rehash the 30s?!  Move forward!  Seriously, what is there to gain from re-living 70 years ago?  Nothing.  Create something new.  Gwen Stefani's new album may in fact be psychotic but at least it's progress.  Seriously, that girl is bananas.  B-A-N-A-N-A-S.

-Chunky Soup Ads- First of all, I don't give a fuck what NFL players eat.  I just want to see them get out there and beat each other and maybe, just maybe, somebody leaves on a stretcher.  These are modest hopes, I know.  But these Chunky Soup commercials not only tell me what they eat to get "big and strong" but it also tells me that they rely on their mothers to feed them.  Because nothing says, "big and tough" like: Mom's gonna make me some meat-soup!

-Clerks II Credits- Hey for those of you that own the DVD and have really good eye-sight, you can find my name in the credits after the real credits after the real film, as opposed to the fake film (???).  Here's how:  From the start of the "Final Credits," fast forward 1 minute and 20 seconds and hit pause.  Then scoot forward frame by frame till you see my name on the left-middle section (or second from the left section).  Then enjoy the next 22 frames until my name disappears.  Hollywood, here I come...

-Robin Williams- It's a sad day when I have to bag on somebody that I have met and enjoyed.  Sorry, Robin.  It's just your time.  You're just trying too hard right now.  Your impressions of "ghetto people" are really showing your age and ethnicity.  You repeat the same material on different networks and in interviews.  And most unfortunately, your seemingly less funny than you are disruptive.  This is rectifiable (is that a word?  If not, I own it!).  Please, fix yourself.

-Mater- In the movie, Cars, there is a tow truck character who explains that his name is "Mater.  Like Tuhmater, without the Tuh."  I have no problem with the joke itself.  My problem is with it being apparently the only repeatable line from the movie.  I haven't seen the movie.  I don't care to.  Cars that talk, why???  But I digress... People who've seen the movie, and maybe this is just in my own house, seem to think that when they repeat this line, that it is somehow supposed to be funny to everybody.  No.  "You had to be there, I guess."  No.  Stop it.

-Miss USA- This is such a ridiculous controversy.  So the girl drank while underage and made out with Miss Teen USA, who cares (but where is the video, huh-huh)?!  I think that her actions actually more accurately represent her peers than people'd like to admit.  Fuck it!  Go to any high school.  Any.  You will find underage girls swilling brewskis and doing all manner of wrongness everywhere you turn.  Who gives a shit?!  And honestly, what standards could a contest that's results are 2/3rds based on clothing appearance possibly have?!  Get used to it.  You're lame.  And our daughters, sisters, and our cousins are all drunken whores.  It's what it is.  Change reality, not your stupid contest results.

-Time Magazine- You lazy fucks.  They recently named their "Person of the Year" every single person who looks at the magazine.  That is so retarded, I can't even describe it.  Speaking only for myself, I can tell you that I am worthy of no such honor.  I eat too much, I sleep too much, I watch too much TV, I curse constantly (especially when I spot Bullshit), and I hardly care about anyone at all (slight exaggeration).  You want to award that?!  Fuck you.  I quit!

-The Suicide Girls- I don't understand how these chicks are in the top blogs everyday and I really don't understand the fascination with them at all.  I'm all for recognizing beauty in all of it's shapes and forms (hell, bring it on) but I just don't see the point in this particular group.  It's like, "let's take a bunch of chicks with beautiful faces, bodies, and unique personalities, tat the shit out of them (I mean, to gross proportions), and then sell it as somehow more artful than Playboy!"  It's nonsense. 

Ladies, do whatever you want to yourselves.  If tattoos are how you feel you need to express yourselves, that's fine.  But don't be offended if I think you just ruined a work of art by putting a work of art on yourself.  The craze has gone way too far and it's getting gross.  But don't worry about pleasing me.  I'm just one lunatic in the world.  But you're not pleasing to look at anymore either.  And forthat, I am truly sorry.

So that's what I've got for today, kids.  Agree, disagree, we're just bricks in the wall.  High-Five!  Oh yeah.  :-P Pbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbth!!!

The End Is The Beginning

Hey, kids!  It's been a crazy week or so.  Here's a nice little recap of things and what's gone down.

I finished my filmie on Monday night thanks to 'round the clock efforts of Josh, my sound designer.  I got a whopping 3 hours sleep that night, which was the opposite of awesome.  But we finished and I was pretty happy with it.

The SDSU Film Festival jury had viewed the film prior to Monday, without most of the sound, and they deemed in unworthy of making the half of the festival that people would have to pay to see.  Needless to say, I was bummed.  Most of my friends' films had made it and that made it all the harder.  It was no consolation to me that we were still in the free festival and people would still get to see my work.  After all the effort I had put into my filmie and it being the culmination of my academic career, having my filmie relegated to the red-headed stepchild festival felt like an indictment on me.  It hurt bad.

But when the sound was finished (for now), the filmie was twice as good as before.  So there was some hope, though it seemed fleeting, that a change would get made and it would get bumped up to the big-time.

Meanwhile, I had other stuff to get done.  I had a 30-page First Act screenplay to write for Friday.  I had at that point (Monday) only written about 3 and an 1/8th pages, and one of those pages needed to be re-worked. 

I pissed away Tuesday somewhat by watching TV and nonsense (I'm sure I was also on here too much) and I typed a few things for directing class.  So on Wednesday I set out to pretty much write the whole damned thing.  I'm not gonna lie, it turned out pretty damned good.  It ended up only being 21 pages but the story was there and moving and it was only the first draft.  It was really nice to have that done and under my belt for the rest of the week.

My printer cartridge had slightly different ideas.  The black ink ran out, wouldn't ya know it.  I had to print out at school which was a minor inconvenience/annoyance.

On Thursday, I grudgingly used my filmie as my final project in my directing class.  I had wanted to do something unique but my time was clearly devoted to my filmie and so things had to work out this way.  I still felt like I had let my jolly professor, Peter, down.  On a side note, I had seen him really yell at somebody the previous week and it made me more than slightly afraid of him (like I said, he's always very jolly).  But I digress...  So I showed my filmie in class and the response was pretty positive, though we watched it on a really shitty TV.  So that was comforting but I did notice areas that we could tighten up later.  Much later.

That night was the festival.  Early Thursday morning, I received an email about my filmie making the paid portion of the festival.  I was really happy about that but also sad that my actors probably wouldn't have enough notice to be there for it.  But at least it meant that my filmie was worth paying to see.  It made me feel like a professional filmmaker.

When it came time for my filmie, I slumped down in my seat and hyperventilated, waiting to be booed off of the campus.  Of course that didn't happen, nor would it have but I can be quite ridiculous with myself.  We actually got a really great response.  They laughed in all the right spots and everyone was very complimentary afterwards.  I was and am quite pleased.  This festival was going to be my litmus test of where this film would go, either to more festivals or into the vault, never to be seen again.  I'm touched to say that the former is far more likely.  High-Five!

On Friday morning, I delivered my screenplay to my professor and Erik and I ate a celebratory lunch, at Sbarros!  We had both done it, we graduated.  Holy smokes!  Done.  Cah-put.  It's a good feeling but I know I'm going to miss a lot of people.  Greeeeeeeeeeeeeeggggg!

On Saturday, I went to work at the Convention Center for the very last time, fully expecting some sort of celebration.  And... ...that's a negative.  Nothing.  A lump of coal might have been more enthusiastic.  I was really disappointed.  I spent 5 years at that building, over 1/5th of my life.  My friend Tony and I sprung for pizza and so I drowned myself in that.  I also spent the last half-hour or so in the bathroom.  Seriously, who needs alcohol?!  Again, it was good to be moving on but I will miss many people.  I still have to call a few people to say proper good-byes.

So, I'm a college graduate.  I'm unemployed.  I'm 23Gs in debt.  And I'm overweight (mostly unrelated, just figured I'd throw that in). 

Christmas is coming though and so is much leisure.  I have shopping to do and DVDs to watch.  More blogs will be coming too, kids.  Oh yeah.  :-P Pbbbbbbbbbbbbbth!!!

Red Sux

Hey kids!  So I should totally be writing my 30-page screenplay right now but something in today's news struck me (not literally, that would've hurt) and I must write about it.

The Boston Red Sox have signed Japanese pitcher Daisuke Matsuzaka.  That's not that astounding, I know.  The thing that bugs me is that they're going to pay him 52 million dollars after paying his former team 51 million dollars for exclusive negotiation rights.  Again, that is sports, so why does it bother me?

It bothers me because the Red Sox and their fans try to pass themselves off as some underdog team that is always struggling to beat the Yankees.  But with your own exhorbent spending, I got news for ya Sawx fans, YOU ARE THE FUCKING YANKEES!!!

You spend and spend and spend and spend and spend.  You won your World Series in '04 and since then you have spent and spent.  Last season you spent the second most in the MLB on your players, out-spent only by the Yankees.

You can't be underdogs when you're only spending 20 million dollars less than the next guy and you're spending nearly 100 million more than all the 28 remaining teams.  That makes you the OVERDOGS (?)!  

This past year you lost.  You didn't even make the playoffs.  And I laughed, though admittedly for more than one reason.

This coming year, I hope you lose too.  Because you are the Evil Empire.  You are the Yankees.  So by all means, continue to spend ridiculous money ($100 million) on guys like J.D. Drew (whose real name is David John, go figure) and Julio Lugo. 

I hope you lose to the Royals, the Devil Rays, the Twins, the A's, and when you play the Yankees be sure to bring your bats and not just your checkbooks or you may as well just spending the whole game jerking each other off.

Playball, ya fuckers!

Ha-rumph...

MILESTONE

Hey kids!  It has come to my attention (because I check all the time) that I just received my 10,000th blog view! 

YAY!

YAY FOR ME!!!

YAY FOR ALL OF US!!!

YAY FOR ALL THE KIDS IN THE STREETS NOT TAKING ANY SHIT FROM THE MAN WHO'S ALWAYS TRYIN' TO KEEP 'EM DOWN BECAUSE THEY LOOK DIFFERENT OR SMELL DIFFERENT OR WEAR HIGH HEEL SNEAKERS, HOT PANTS, AND A TURTLENECK IN 90 DEGREE WEATHER 'CAUSE IT'S ALL THEY'VE GOT TO WEAR 'CAUSE THEY'RE BROKE 'CAUSE THE MAN IS KEEPIN' 'EM DOWN ALL THE TIME AND THEY CANNOT RISE UP AND I'M REALLY MILKING THIS NOW AND I PROBABLY SHOULD STOP BUT I WON'T 'CAUSE IT'S JUST TO GOOD, AND OKAY, I'm done.

Hoorays all around to you heroes, and to the few anti-heroes along the way.  You know who you are (crazy bitches).  And to Davinchi, I have no idea who you are but keep reading, buddy!  Yeah!

In other slightly less important news, we finally got a rough cut of my film together.  We're still missing some shots and we're gonna get them on Sunday (Lord willing) but otherwise the story is all there minus a sound design and the aforementioned shots.  The dog actually worked out really well so that's a big sigh of relief.  The owners aren't returning our calls now though, so everyone send a big "Boo" their way, care of me.

Hey, remember that one time, earlier this year, when the Cardinals won the World Series?  That's still awesome.  It's the skib-scam-skizzle!

And I should probably be doing work right now but I'm all hyped up from many things.  I saw a fun play that my professor, Peter, directed.  It was jolly-good fun as someone as English as Peter might say.  Maybe I really don't have my English accent down quite yet?  No matter.

So it is with this I say good-bye, kiddies.  Pleasant dreams.  Peasant dreams probably wouldn't be quite as fulfilling.  Anywhoo, thanks again for all the support.  I hope I'm doing something right and I hope to keep deserving the blog-love.  Oh yeah.  :-P  Pbbbbbbbbbbbbbbth!!!

Work Doodles Vol. 4

Hey, kids! I drew this for you at work today. It's Borat. I hope you like it!

Hell On Wheels, On A Trailer, With A Dog

Hey, kids!  As I take a long awaited and greatly needed moment to breathe, I want you all to know how my film shoot went this past week.

Monday: We get to the location and all seems well.  Actor's there, cab showed up, Belo let us in; good-times, right?  Oh, wrong.  As we were getting set up for the wide-shot of the old E Street Alley, a cop was coming around and ticketing ill-parked cars.  No problem, I was at a meter with plenty-o-time.  For some reason, our cab driver (the real one, not the character) started to wig-out and insisted on leaving.  No problem, a little more work for Tuesday but doable.  So we continue to set up.  Meanwhile, Matt is talking to our cab driver on the phone and the guy isn't coming back, ever. 

WHAT?!  My thoughts exactly.

I guess he had too many parking tickets already (which is why he left in the first place) and then he had a class at SDSU on Tuesday (which would've been nice to know during the scheduling process, or beforehand in general).  In my mind, if we're paying you, fuck yo' class!  But alas, no dice, this guy's out.  Matt semi-frantically tries to get another cab as Isaiah, Andrew, David, and I attempt to roll with it and set up the shots that don't require the cab.

And then the breaker pops.  Fuck.  Now what?  I call the Maintenance Manager for Belo and he's not coming down to reset the breaker.  He points me toward some more outlets we could access and I call my Uncle Johnny for his generator, which I'd earlier in the day told him we didn't need.  So an hour later we get the generator running most of our lights but it is loud as all hell.  It could wake your mother.  So definitely no audio recording now.  Yay, more work in post...

So we get rolling and the lighting is looking really good and our lead actor is doing great but we're behind schedule.  And then the dog arrives.  Oy...  Facially, the dog looks great but he's over half a foot taller than I was expecting.  But he rolls with it (he being me, not the dog).  To say that the dog was difficult to direct would be a gross understatement.  I honestly believe it would have been easier to rope a bull from a 3rd story window.  The owners didn't seem to have much control either.  Yippee...  At this point, I'm just crossing my fingers and hoping we can cut it together and make it work.

So we wrap-up the night around midnight (instead of 10:30, which was probably unrealistic anyway) and after I get home and unload the gear, I get to bed around 1am.

Tuesday: The Big Day: I wake up at 4am and do my morning thing and load the gear into the '06 Expedition we rented and I hustle down to U-Haul to pick up the car carrier.  No major problems besides heavy traffic.  I get to our base camp behind Petco Park at 8am and we plan our moves.  We shoot the exterior of the cab shots first.  These probably take a little longer than necessary but we hadn't planned anything specific to speed up the process.  We finished and headed back to basecamp and prepared to load the cab onto the car carrier.  That takes close to an hour as no instructions were given to me by U-Haul. 

We notice that now the cab is sitting higher than I thought it would on the trailer and it looked kinda funny.  Add to that that you couldn't open the doors so our actors had to enter via the windows like it was the General Lee.  We attach the car mount and our police escort arrived and we headed out.  We weren't entirely sure which streets would be best to film on so Isaiah and I got into the cop car and drove around first.  I rode shotgun, which I now realize is much more literal in a police car.  We decided to film in a loop pattern going down E Street, turning left on 11th, left on B Street, and then left on 4th Ave.

So I'm sitting in the back on the Expedition, getting audio levels, when my monitor dies.  Now I can't see what the camera sees, to know whether I like it or not.  We press on and do a few takes before I realize that I'm watching the audio levels and I'm not even looking at the actors.  That's bad, yes?  Yes.  I fix that brain cramp and I think we get what we need.  But time is against us.  We're probably 2 hours behind again.  We grab some lunch and head back to basecamp where we bid farewell to our actress and say hello to the dog again and our bank robber character. 

Oh yes, did I forget to mention that the battery on the cab died?  Apparently, rolling the windows up and down for entry, as well ventilation, is bad if the engine's not running.  I knew that but had no control over it.  We need the battery to start the cab to get it off the trailer so that set us back a bit as well.  So we painfully get our dog in there for the final shot of the script and then we all pile in and race the sun to film in our loop with the bank robber character.  People had been staring at our production all day and this time of day was no exception.  We finished up at 5pm which is exactly when we needed to to have any shot at returning the car carrier before the Expedition was due back.  Yay for deadlines...

So we pile all the gear into the my car and head back over to the alley to shoot what we hadn't the night before.  Our crew was down to 3 people and that didn't help us for speed.  But we got all our shots, minus the lone last shot of the dog because the owner didn't feel like coming down again.  Gotta love that committment...  We finished around 10:30pm, which was on-schedule, sort of.  Matt and I dropped off the equipment at Wednesday's location and I got into bed around 1am.  Yay for having the opportunity to sleep-in...

Wednesday:  Despite my best efforts to sleep-in, I was up at 9am.  I got to the location at 2pm and we began what turned out to be a welcomed problem-free night and we were done by 8pm.  We had more help from Gerry and we had a sound guy (Erik)!  I knew this would be the easy shoot and it felt good to end with it.  We bid a skeptical farewell to our lead actor and went to transfer the footage at Gerry's house. 

And that didn't work out.  Final Cut Pro HD and HDV apparently are not as close a-friends as I thought they were.  I didn't end up getting home till 3am and about 1 shot got captured.  We saw the footage though and it looks great.  HD... Mmmmm yummy...  We have to get a couple more shots but I think we can make it all work.

Thursday: After an early morning to return the equipment and another failed attempt at capturing the footage, here I am, give or take.  I ran into my directing professor after dropping off the gear and I told him about how it went and how hard the dog stuff was, and guess what he tells me?  His daughter is an animal trainer for the Humane Society!  How would I have known...  Oh well.  We can make it work.

I want to end this blog by saying that my actors on this film are heroes.  They were beyond patient and I never felt any negative energy from them that could have so easily been there under the circumstances.  Lesser folks might have pouted, not these folks.  They are stars in my book.  And Abdi, our cabbie was equally patient and enthusiastic. 

Another special shout-out should be paid to my family, who came through for me huge.  How will I ever find the words, you guys...

Thanks to the select group who came and helped.  You are Grade A: USA Prime.  "You're so money!"  Now, I gotta roll into bed and try to take my mind off of cabs and trailers and dogs.  OH MY!