I’ve been thinking a lot about what I want to do and who I want to do it with for the rest of my working life.
Not so much where.
This isn’t a crisis as much as it is a reevaluation.
French press coffee is very good.
Attended my first Opera yesterday.
Movies from your childhood, my childhood, are weird as an adult. Kids look young when they should look old.
When did I become discerning about movies?
Cookies. Cookies. Good.
Using spacebar instead of setting up tab markers.
Discern – Fragged!
Who knew Dunkin’ Doughnuts made such good coffee?
In which I explain why I suck.
Ted suggested I do a kinetic text animation for the string of phrases. He’s right. I should.
Now. To find the motivation to make that happen. Please. Thank you.
I discovered Sports Night on Netflix. I am enjoying Aaron Sorkin’s first TV effort. It makes so much sense. The West Wing and Studio 60 are two of my favorite serial TV shows and Sports Night fits the mold well, but it’s rough and it’s tumble. For one, it’s a 22 min sitcom style length, but it’s a single camera and not often laugh out loud funny. It’s usually feels too short, yet poignant. The dialog is repetitive, Really? Really. Really? Really. But it has a real life quick wit about it that became too quick and too witty in the West Wing. It has loads of people that you’d recognize, William H. Macy, Peter Krause, Felicity Huffman, etc. etc. etc.
Here is the thing. All this TV. This Tele-Vision, is beamed directly into my house. DIRECTLY. This isn’t new, but it’s all on demand, that is kinda new. However you look at it; at my finger tips is, MacGuyver, The Cosby Show, That 70’s Show, Sports Night, Studio 60, or Battlestar Galactica. To name several. At any moment I can, like, you know, watch an entire season of Sports Night. Or I can work on my short film. Yea, I could do that…
or MacGuyver! Childhood revisited: Sliders. Babylon 5. Star Trek. Too Much TV Makes Jack Not Be Productive.
So. What do we do? What do I do? I don’t know. After spending a long day at work, it’s really hard to sit in front of yet-another-computer and work on my short. Or Kinetic Text. Or Sonny. Or This-Yet-To-Be written movie, I’m writing. Or. Or. Or.
If Ifs and Buts were candy and nuts…How does that saying go? I need some gall darn moderation. I need a bit of structure. I need to lut down some pimits. I’m asking for input. How do you get the stuff done that you want to get done? I’d much rather sit on the couch and let the tide of Netflix roll over me. In the terms of Merlin, How do you ship something new when you have a day job?
I’ve been playing this game with Nikki. Connecting words or phrases to make a big long string of non-sensical fun.
Here is our latest creation:
birthday cake walk in the park taverns maid rite loose meat on a casey’s bakery bun coffee maker sit down and shut up and away in my beautiful beautiful baloony binge eating healthy start up and about a boy george harrison ford escape artist’s quarter year long beautiful hair style magazine rack of lamb chop suey-thing massage parlord of war of the world vision correction-ing your relatives-itting from iowa hawkeyes have it’s about time to go ahead make my daytime soapy water glass house guest bath towel off and on top of the world traveler-ning disability pay rating slump-ed over and under the bed of iniquities-zing me after school yard brawl my eyes out and about the town drunk love of my lifetime movie at the parking ramp uptown house mother of pearl earring around your finger-l Friday of the dead space cadet in training ground for life of crime and punishmentally challenged individual at dawned on me-an girlsurly brewing company car jack maatman on wireless Internet income over to my place for you can count on meager lodging-gle bells batman smelled something rotten dollar billionaire plane crash wednesday time talk show me the money isn’t everything of the past and present me a letter-sheairy thoughts.
Reading it aloud is a chore and I find it extremely entertaining. I did another one of these with Matt and Tyler after the film shoot, and I attempted to typeset it, but wasn’t too successful.
(click to enlarge)
I got somewhere, but didn’t like it when I arrived. I tried again with the latest one, but gave up. It’s really hard to communicate the humor in it, using only text. Anyone want to take a crack at typesetting this in a readable fun-ny way?
My favorite band is releasing a new album on June 7. I pre-ordered it this morning. As a reward they gave me an EP.
They’re also doing some videos leading up to the release.
One of the songs on the EP, Time Spend In Los Angeles (youtube), resonates with this fella; it’s an unmistakable thing.
In which he documents the laughter of last night.
I laughed a lot last night. Most of it was Ethan’s fault. We started doing this potential joke bit. If someone was clever, we’d dissect it, suggesting what the joke could have been about, like, “That was a potential homonym joke.” The best part was we didn’t explain the new potential joke, but we knew. You had to be there. Ethan wants to be a stand up comic that starts all of his jokes with, you had to be there.
This is all very likely less funny than it was in person. I don’t mind though. It reaffirms that all y’all need to visit. Soon.
Three hipsters walk into a bar.
Admiral Akbar
“Can you be more specific.”
Tri-Bond
In which he writes for three days in a row.
Today makes for a threepeat. I’m not sure what I’m going to write today. How about I catch you up on what I’m working and doing these days.
The situation:
Today was week two of climbing at Stoney Point. We’ve got all the gear and knowhow to climb as often as we can. Now that the weather is cooperating, we should be able to go a lot of the weekends. The nice part is that at most it takes a whole morning and at least it takes only a few hours. Both ways, we have a majority of Saturday to rock in other ways.
I’m working at LaunchDRTV. I make infomercials every day. Some days that means making something from scratch, other days it means revising already completed shows. Work is good. I dig the people. The best part is when things start to gel. When we’re on the same page and making fast decisions and watching quick. (You can watch in double speed, it’s wonderful.) At worst, I’m hawking products with people that don’t think I always have the best opinion! What? Me? Wrong? Never.
In April, I directed a series of short films with the very talented, Tyler Thornberg, Laurel Ann, and Matt Ford. I cast unknown-to-me actors for the first time. It was a trip to have so many people show up and audition for a small project with no pay and then, THEN, they read my words back to me. It was so weird to hear my words being read, in an audition, to me. WEIRD. It was a great time. We shot them all in a weekend. Now, I’m doing post on them. It’s good and bad. Some days, I don’t want to work on my own stuff. Other days, I get going and really enjoy it.
I still do a bit ‘o web stuff. Room Forty and LA Bento are two different catering companies Steve Fortunato owns. I’ve been doing a little work on the Room Forty website. I didn’t design it, but I’ve been doing the upkeep. The design, especially the backend, is great. I’ve been thinking about revamping this website, but haven’t had the time or energy to mess with something that isn’t broken. A while ago, I started playing with moving stuff in 3Dish space on a copy of my website. I played with flipping over cells and other weird/cool stuff. I just went to that space, and it doesn’t work any more. Weird.
Lastly, I’m writing a little. I’m trying to write on here with frequency. I’ve rekindled a few of my screenplay ideas. I’ve started to write a wee bit of poetry (below).
Bands I’m listening to:
I hope you’re well.
I spend about two hours in traffic every weekday. Most of that time I listen to podcasts. My favorites are the shows that are on the 5by5 network. Back to Work with Dan Benjamin and Merin Mann and The Talk Show with Dan Benjamin and John Gruber are both great. They are very different podcasts.
Back to Work is about being productive and good at what you do. The Talk Show is about techie stuff and James Bond. Like everything I truly enjoy, my favorite parts of these shows are when they aren’t completely on topic, but it still fits.
Merlin Mann is writing a book. It’s a frequent discussion topic on B2W. He posted an article on 43folders about how he’s undergoing a change in priorities regarding the book, deadlines, and being proud of what he submits. I found the article via MetaFilter. It is fun to read how thoughtful internet people responded1 to the article and people who follow B2W responded of the article.
The following podcast was about the article and its ramifications. It was a fascinating listen. My favorite part was Merlin addressing the idea of hypocrisy. The question was, “How do you justify being someone who writes about being productive and shipping and then not ship your own product on time?” Merlin talked about how the assumption in the question was that being hypocritical is something that undermines a message.
While on the surface I might agree with the assumption, Merlin did a great job of explaining that he was dealing with the exact problem that he preaches against every day. What better way to have first hand knowledge? He also attacked that idea that we want all life-answer-givers to be super human. We want them to not have faults, shortcomings, or struggles. Merlin suggested that all people have problems with hypocrisy in their own lives, why not own it?
That night I was working with the Fritzsches. We talked about what I had heard and G-Bomb came up with a good thought — “If the hypocrisy is owned, we don’t have a problem with it, but if the hypocrisy is avoided and denied, it’s the main problem we have in not believing anything from said person2.”
I like having full-time work and I like doing side projects. Lately, I’ve had trouble doing anything but work and TV. Sometimes, I’ll nerve up and write, draw, or edit, but mostly, I sit, I watch, and I listen. I am learning. I’m learning to make schedules, plans, and lists. I’m learning that I enjoy watching. I’m learning that unwinding is good. I’m learning that sloth-itude comes naturally. I’m learning that by doing, by sitting and doing, even if I don’t want to, I make things.
Merlin quotes this guy whose name I can’t recall and I’ll only get the gist of the quote — “95% of creativity is moving your hand every day.” The idea that once you’ve started, even if you don’t want to, you’ll get some inspiration, ideas, and time will move.
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1A bit of Meta-Meta for you: The Metafilter crowd is pretty snarky. There is a lot of one line comments in that thread, but for the most part I find it to be a thoughtful, engaging discussion about what is linked. They are more like real people to me than other message boards. I think that is because when I read AskMeFi, I find people to give very smart and rational advice.
2Gillian should correct me on what she said. She’s a thoughtful person herself and should be able to write her own quote.
Reel