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November 30, 2006
A few words from Virginia Woolf
“Like a work of art,” she repeated, looking from her canvas to the drawing-room steps and back again. She must rest for a moment. And, resting, looking from one to the other vaguely, the old question which traversed the sky of the soul perpetually, the vast, the general question which was apt to particularise itself at such moments as these, when she released faculties that had been on the strain, stood over her, paused over her, darkened over her. What is the meaning of life? That was all—a simple question; one that tended to close in on one with years. The great revelation had never come. The great revelation perhaps never did come. Instead there were little daily miracles, illuminations, matches struck unexpectedly in the dark.
—To the Lighthouse
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November 29, 2006
Poetic spam X
I thought I was done with the spam glorification...but this one was just too excellent to pass up.
pianist
we decided to return there for the foodgasm worthy pesto sauce!
How are you going to use it?
I actually beat him at mini golf! :::daydream believer:::. :::daydream believer:::.
If you see something wonderful, you confidently embrace it.
Sent a few text messages.
But it should also be remembered that this is a card of great creativity, of powerful magic, primal feelings and intuition.
It also describes some of the additional features available if the software is upgraded to Data Protector Express. Check the recipes at.
We waited a little longer to sit on the same patio, and this time we ate early enough to catch the sunset during dinner.
They're just as good as money in your pocket.
Basically the poor little guy had food poisioning! Check the recipes at.
We know how to make each other laugh and just have a good time wandering about. They're just as good as money in your pocket. Maybe if I had seen the first night, they might have introduced people and expected you to remember.
It also describes some of the additional features available if the software is upgraded to Data Protector Express.
This time however, can also result in great creativity, psychic powers, visions and insight. Don't waste it; it's still good food. Maybe if I had seen the first night, they might have introduced people and expected you to remember.
They are partnering with Resturants. Basically the poor little guy had food poisioning!
Then the plan was to head to the city for SOS. The list goes on and on and on. :::daydream believer:::.
If you see something wonderful, you confidently embrace it.
And it's getting close to Christmas, with even more candy on the horizon.
They are partnering with Resturants.
We decided to return there for the foodgasm worthy pesto sauce!
It also addresses common backup and recovery scenarios to assist in disaster recovery planning. It also describes some of the additional features available if the software is upgraded to Data Protector Express.
But regardless, the hype about the movie seemed to be about how it was designed to to influence people to feel pro-Republican and anti-Democrat.
I was supposed to meet some friends.
I was supposed to meet some friends.
I decided to go to sunset, bring the puppy, and just catch the last hour or two.
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November 27, 2006
Homeworld Diaries—Part 3
The Englishman in this photo is not, in fact,
dead, although he certainly appears to be.
In Hollywood, I’m told, 18– to 20-hour days are routine. We weren’t doing anything close to that—more like 12 hours—but still, it got to be a grind. Some of us are not used to rising at the crack of dawn to start loading and unloading equipment. This is what leads to scenes like the one pictured above.
The first day or two, I was too worked up to notice how tired I was. But by Wednesday I was entering a fugue state, and by Friday I was in full-on survival mode, struggling to hold up my end while grabbing a little shuteye between takes. It took me about a week to recover completely.
And yet I have returned twice to do more work on the film, and if they ask me a third time I will probably go back again. Why? Because I hate myself. No, actually because it was really a lot of fun. The action, the camaraderie (camera-derie?), the pleasing sense of something being made in an atmosphere of creativity. It would probably kill me to live like this on a regular basis, but as a hobby it beats the hell out of stamp collecting. Not that I want to pick a fight with the philatelists; they’re a dangerous lot, in their way.
So what will the final product be like? I have no idea, and it’s not under my control, but I have faith in out beloved leader, Phil Hudson. He knows his shit. And by the way, if you ever direct a movie, try to run your set the way Phil did—moving along at a snappy pace while keeping things light and maintaining a sense of humor.
The name of that movie, once again, is Homeworld. Be sure to check the Web site often for release infomation. In the meantime, for my amusement and possibly yours, here are some more photos from the set.
Risking neck cramp to watch dailies.
Sound guy in a rare moment of repose.
Filmmaker as cyborg.
There was a good reason for this, I think.
Really, it all makes perfect sense in context.
No cracks about actors, please. After all, you need to know
what you’re going to look like in the shot.
Our heroes.
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November 24, 2006
Homeworld Diaries—Part 2
The assistant director is having a moment.
Life on a film set is a strange mixture of frantic action and abject boredom. People had told me this before, but it wasn’t till Fort Bragg that I came to appreciate it myself. You race around to get the shot set up, and then most of the time you end up waiting: waiting for the actors to be ready, waiting for the light to be right, waiting for traffic to pass, waiting for the fucking sound guy to get his act together.
Thus it is that filmmaking, although often a high-speed, high-pressure activity, allows many moments for quiet contemplation. This is especially true during that one minute out of the day when the F.S.G. calls for quiet on the set so he can record the room tone, i.e. what it sounds like in this particular location without any added noise. It’s only in situations like this that you begin to appreciate just how long a minute can be—long enough to have a dozen different cascading trains of thought, to experience epiphanies and regrets and fantasies and anything else the human mind is capable of.
(This was captured very well in Tom DiCillo’s Living in Oblivion, which is the Spinal Tap of movies about movies. Toward the end the audio engineer of the film within the film takes room tone, and DiCillo uses this period of enforced silence to cut around to the various characters and get us to think about what they’ve been through. Come to think of it, I haven’t seen Living in Oblivion in a while; note to self.)
Anyway, I found myself looking around amazed at the contrast between the image that was in front of the camera—sometimes just a single actor, or a spider web, or a rock—and everything out of the frame that made that image possible. It struck me that all those people standing around looking at the monitor, or listening to headphones, or holding reflectors and diffusers, or just patiently holding still till the shot was over, were all servants of the camera. The director is the high priest, the rest of the crew are acolytes, and the actors occupy a privileged position, because they will be Seen. In this sense, only what goes into the lens is real; everything else, though you can see it, is an illusion.
Why do we do it? Why do we bow down to the magical recording machine, carry it around with gentle reverence like some aged maharishi, and run ourselves ragged to serve its needs? Simple: immortality. The recorded image has the potential to last forever, and we will fade away. These are the kinds of morbid thoughts you can have when things get too quiet. Now, I think, I will go watch something funny on the television.
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November 22, 2006
Homeworld Diaries—Part 1
Watch out, these woods are infested with film crews.
It was a fine August day when I arrived in Fort Bragg (Mendocino County, not North Carolina) for my first day on the set of the movie that was then called Homeworld-X (it’s since lost the “X”). I had only the vaguest idea of what to expect. The others who were there had already been working together for a couple of weeks, so at first I felt lost, an outsider who doesn’t get any of the jokes.
Fortunately, I was given what may be the best job on a film set: second assistant camera, or to name it more accurately, slate guy. (My only interaction with the camera came during handheld sequences, when I occasionally held it between takes so the director could rest his arms.) This involves kicking off every shot by announcing the scene and take number, clapping the slate, then quickly moving to a safe place out of the frame and remaining quiet and stationary until you hear the word “cut.” Then you update the slate with the new scene or take number, and do it over again.
This is far from mind-taxing, though it does require a certain amount of focus to make sure you’ve always got your numbers right. Each scene consists of a master shot (say Scene 49) and a number of secondary or close-up shots, each of which gets its own letter (49A, 49B, etc.). It was sometimes a little tricky to figure out exactly what constituted a new shot, rather than just a different take of the same shot.
But this was the extent of the challenge involved in the job, leaving me with lots of of processor time left to observe what was going on around me. Also, because the slate has to be ready the instant the shot is set up, I was generally excused from the other tasks around the set like setting up reflectors and clearing brush; instead I mostly stood around watching others do these things, always my preferred working method.
I also spent a lot of time watching Pedro the sound guy, who aside from Phil the director was the only professional on a set full of enthusiastic amateurs. He had a lot of pressure on him, because he had to set up complicated microphone arrangements in very short periods of time, but never—OK, very rarely—showed any signs of stress. Pedro was so unflappable that it was the third day, I think, before he told me that my loud slate clapping was causing him pain.
You see, because the sound guy needs to hear every single thing that is happening during the scene, he is listening with headphones turned way up. Therefore, any loud sound near a microphone is going to hurt him. I remember a particular scene where one of the actors screamed a line at the top of his lungs. He was asked to moderate the volume but was so In the Moment that he kept forgetting; so at the same point during every take I would look over and see Pedro wincing as his ears were blasted. But he never cried out and ruined the take, and that’s what I call professionalism.
In truth, for a group of volunteers, our crew mostly handled itself very professionally, with one or two exceptions. One guy did get fired during the week. It’s not so easy to get fired from a job you’re not being paid for, but he pulled it off. I myself struggled to make it through the week for reasons having to do with sheer exhaustion; more on that later.
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November 21, 2006
Time Flies, and So Do I
Has it really been almost a week since I posted anything? Shocking. I apologize to my legions of readers, but I can give a few reasons why this has happened:
• I love that picture of Tony Danza so much that I wanted to keep it at the top of the page as long as possible.
• I spent yesterday in transit between Oakland and Kansas City, a jaunt which included a long stretch inside a 777 sitting on the ground while a maintenance crew replaced the plane’s starter. This led to a tight connection in Denver, which led to delayed luggage, which led to a basically very long day all around.
• The weekend was occupied with a) a preview of the upcoming hit multimedia property Mankind’s Last Hope and b) many hours on the set of a feature film called Homeworld. Among the things I’ve learned from this experience: The filmmaking, it is very tiring. One wakes up very early, moves around a lot, and spends extended periods of time straining to remain focused while nothing much is happening. Tomorrow I plan to write a bit about my movie adventure; but first, I think, another nap.
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November 15, 2006
Hold Me Closer, (Your Name Here)
You know the Elton John song “Tiny Dancer”? It goes like this:
Hold me closer, tiny dancer
Well tonight, a certain young person told me that she’d always thought Elton was saying
Hold me closer, Tony Danza
And now I’ll never hear the song the same way again. I’m happy about that.
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November 14, 2006
Where's Walton?
That’s an easy one—in this picture of the groundbreaking for the Martin Luther King memorial, that’s him at top left, towering over everyone and smirking as Jesse Jackson embraces Andrew Young. The question is, why is he there? Does The Most Annoying Man in Sportscasting History have some connection to the civil rights movement of which I am ignorant? Maybe so; in all fairness, Walton seems like a decent enough sort, aside from his superhuman annoyingness. Maybe he was there at King’s side back in the day, saying things like, “The whole concept of separate but equal is horrrible, Mart.” But still, it seems strange.
And while we’re at it, who’s that on his right, looking aghast? The caption on SF Gate, from which I shamelessly stole this picture, describes her as “an unidentified woman.” Maybe fashion designer Tommy Hilfiger, looking spiffy but disoriented in the red tie, knows her. Wait, Tommy Hilfiger? Why and wherefore? Oh, never mind.
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November 13, 2006
Anvil Club
We’re all familiar with media depictions of someone—often an anthropomorphized animal, such as a coyote—having an anvil dropped on him. Yet how many of us have any real experience of having an anvil dropped on us, or contrariwise of being the one to drop an anvil on a fellow mammal?
Isn’t this really the problem with our modern world, that we are so detached from the reality of concrete things such as anvils?
This is why I think Anvil Club is such a great idea. I’m picturing a dingy basement room somewhere filled with anvils of all shapes and sizes. Once a week, we will gather there and take turns dropping anvils on each other. During the rest of the week, we will not speak of it, but you will be able to spot another Anvil Clubber from the way he walks—striding confidently, head held high, or at least as high as the inevitable back injuries will allow. We will be suffused with the inner glow that comes from having a heavy metallic object dropped on you, or from dropping such an object on another, and people will respond to this without knowing why. We will become more popular and successful than ever before.
You know I’m right, don’t you? Now who’s with me?
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November 10, 2006
A few words from Steven Wright
“You never know what you have until it’s gone, and I wanted to know what I had, so I got rid of everything.”
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November 9, 2006
R.I.P. Ed Bradley
Ed was the coolest.
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November 8, 2006
Post-Election Hangover Blues
So, to pick up where I left off, which was: The Daily Show. I had some vague ideas floating around in my head about the big stories of the day, which were a) the Rumsfeld resignation, and b) the Britney/K-Fed split. And of course Jon Stewart and his lackeys got there first and got there better, drawing the (what now seem like) obvious parallels between two couples who swore they were in it for the long term. My schtick was much weaker, something about Rumsfeld—who always liked to ask and answer his own questions anyway—now being able to do it in the privacy of his own home. Believe me, somewhere down in the depths of my cerebellum, it was screamingly funny. Actually, more like mildly amusing. But never mind.
As for Britney and Kevin, my imaginary commentary referenced My Name Is Earl and went something like this:
Britney is now free to marry the guy who works down at the Crab Shak, while Kevin will use the divorce settlement to crisscross Middle America crossing people off his list, presumably starting with anyone who’s ever listened to his music.
I know, lame. Honestly, I am not feeling well. Now I must return to watching Stephen Colbert make like Charlie Chaplin. I love professional comedy.
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November 7, 2006
Let the Trials Begin
Hunter S. Thompson used this phrase back during the Reagan administration, and it seems quite apropos tonight, as we begin what I hope will be a lengthy series of investigations, trials, and possibly executions. Like the man says, certain ones will be smitten, and they know who they are. I look forward to seeing Republican turn on Republican, not just testifying against each other, but tearing each other limb from limb and perhaps resorting to cannibalism.
Does that make me sick? Is it wrong that I took a twisted joy in watching Rick Santorum’s children cry? I worry. It’s just that it’s been so long…the Democratic Party has been losing consistently almost as long as the Golden State Warriors, who blew another one tonight to the New Orleans/Oklahoma City Hornets. Now, can I neatly tie up this thread by connecting basketball back to politics via New Orleans and Hurricane Katrina? I probably could, if I wanted to. But I’d rather watch The Daily Show.
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November 6, 2006
The World Ends Tonight
The world ends tonight when you fall asleep. As you doze, a new world will be constructed around you. This new world will look identical, at first. Only upon closer examination will the differences start to show.
Your assignment: Note these differences, and make the most of them.
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November 5, 2006
Metronome to Piña Colada
Still more top-of-the-page juxtapositions taken from Webster’s College Dictionary.
metronome to miasma
miniaturist to Minor Prophet
mistaken to mitsvah
moneygrubber to monkey puzzle
motherboard to Motown
munster to musculature
National Socialism to naughty
obelisk to oblique
off-limits to oil
ownership to Ozark Mountains
party-colored to passage grave*
peanut to pectoral
penitentiary to pentagon
perceptual to perfect
phooey to phosphocreatine
pickled to pièce de résistance
pill to piña colada
*noun; a chamber tomb with a narrow entrance passage leading to the burial chamber
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November 2, 2006
Overheard in the Garden of Eden
So, uh, Adam, how are things going down there?
Good. Real good. I mean, great! What do I have to complain about? I lay around all day in the sun, eat of the fruit You’ve provided for me, smell the flowers, watch the moon and stars, talk to the animals…
And?
Well, it’s just, the animals never say anything back. Nothing ever does. I thought I heard a tree talking to me once, but that was just because I’d eaten some of that one plant. I mean, I hate to complain. Everything’s so beautiful. It’s just that sometimes it gets a little…
Boring.
No, no, I wouldn’t say that. Everything’s wonderful, really. Just once in a while, at night especially, it’s a little too quiet.
Funny you should say that.
Why?
I’ve come up with an idea. Something you’re going to like.
Go on.
I’m going to make another person. Like you, only different.
Different how?
A little smaller. Softer. Better-smelling. You’ll like her.
What does “her” mean?
It’s a word that refers to this other person. You’ll understand later.
So will he—
She.
Ooh, I like the sound of that. Will she be able to talk?
Oh, most definitely.
Wow, um, that’s…wait, what if she doesn’t like me?
Fortunately, you don’t have a lot of competition. You might want to take a bath. Maybe pick up after yourself a little bit. Stop sleeping on top of half-eaten apples and plums…you know what, never mind. Don’t worry about it. She’ll put you straight.
So when do I meet her?
Real soon. I’m going to make you go to sleep for a while, and I’m going to take out one of your ribs and put it in the new person.
Um…is that really necessary?
Not really. It’s just symbolism.
Oh. Well, I guess You know best.
Yeah, I do, I really do. I suppose we should get on with it. Hmmm…
What?
Well…
What? Is there something you’re not telling me?
Well, I’m afraid she may drive you a little crazy once in a while. But you need that. It’ll help you develop. You’re not going to lay around eating fruit for the rest of your life, are you?
What else is there?
You’ll find out. Oh, I forgot the coolest part! I’m fixing things so that the two of you can make new people together. Isn’t that wild?
Wait, this is all moving too fast….
[Sound of an unconscious body hitting the ground.]
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November 1, 2006
If I had a hammer...
To be honest, I probably wouldn’t hammer in the morning, because I am not awake then. I wouldn’t hammer in the evening, either; that would be gauche. I would hammer in the mid to late afternoon, if at all. It’s entirely possible that the hammer would just sit there gathering dust, and perhaps eventually be sold on eBay. With any luck, the hammer’s new owner would be more of a morning person.
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