It’s funny how one believes they see the whole picture when the paint from the first strokes is still tacky to the touch. 

I thought I knew, but until you called, begging me not to hang up, I had no idea.

Thank you for I am now free to live my life.

Oh, I nearly forgot to give you the update in the ‘mouse v. mouse chronicles.

In a classic example of “if you aren’t willing to kill it, you have no right to eat it” (or something like that) I’m innocently changing the oil in the car on Sunday afternoon when ‘mrs. comes and excitedly tells me to “come quickly.” She and the kids have the Big Mouse cornered under a bookshelf and they “want me to do something about it.”

Here’s where someone should have thought fast and made me sign over video rights.

I grab a broom and the skimmer net from the swimming pool and Go In to Do Battle. 

To my great surprise, I actually trap the aforementioned Big Mouse in the net. 

Figuring aforementioned Big Mouse should not be out in the daytime, hiding semi-exposed under the bookshelf and moving slowly enough for me to catch him, I determine to dispatch him to the Great White Peachfield in the sky.  With the only implement handy:  a shoe.

No.  I don’t feel particularly proud of this near cannibalistic version of rodentcide.  But it did bring about a very hands-on end to our battle that somehow seemed more just and proper than the cold snap of a trap in the night. 

If you aren’t willing to look ridiculous in front of your family while killing a mouse with your bare hands favorite sneaker, you have no right to kill it at all?

Not being one to look behind the glitz and glamour of the Hollywood lights and makeup, I was shocked that this movie made me think. It seems as though everything and nothing came from this film and punched me in the face.  What is it saying?  What does it even mean? 

I’m feel that I am of at least average intelligence.  At my disposal are a plethora of “twenty dollar words” that led my ex to comment, “You sure do got a purdy mouth...”

But I digress, I know NOTHING of politics or religion.  I know what I believe...Or, better yet, I know what I CLAIM to believe.  I know why I like or don’t like something, but this movie left me questioning my own beliefs and upbringing.

Weird…

I know you met Bridget on POF.  I’m not stupid, so do us all a favor and stop acting like it.

You are a weak, pitiful, sick individual.  You sent porn to my phone, you send texts to which I do not reply, you think that if someone doesn’t want you they must be “hurt and unable to love...” Shall I continue? 

You’re miserable because you cannot stand your own company and you cannot contain your own carnal urges.  You feel that sex is a way to “connect” to other individuals and attempt to use it to forge a bond between yourself and the women you date.

You know nothing about me, so therefore I am fully aware and unsuceptible all of the bullshit that spews from your filthy, deceptive mouth.  Your words are merely conduits… Tools ineptly used to push every button of someone until you figure out the best way to make them tick.  You feel that if you can weasel your pathetic, little way into their minds they will cling to you.  You’re manipulative and conniving, relying only on your own selfish desires to make someone else believe that you are more than what you seem.

All of these lines lead me to believe you feel that if you can convince one lonely girl that she is beautiful, you would no doubt be an abuser....Preying on the very weaknesses you used to gain her trust.

I have shown you nothing, but bitter and true despite, yet you still claim to be “drawn” to me.

I am not Bridget...I am an unwilling participant in a sad game played solely by a vile and deplorable individual.  I pray that she doesn’t offer you the location of my home as easily as she did the numbers to my cell.

You’re a stalker...Hiding behind IP addresses, throwaway Nokias, and meaningless words in attempts to ruin a stranger’s life.  You continue this frightening/maddening charade with me because you know that I have no legal recourse.  I would change my number, but I am hardheaded and I feel that would be letting you win.

I wish you nothing, but trouble and heartache in your future, simply because you have brought it upon yourself.

Had dinner with a friend last night.  Their 18-year-old son is going on a road trip to California [from New Mexico] with two friends,and the parents are mother hening them to DEATH about preparation, plans, etc.... It is actually hysterical and would make a great sit com....  What ever happened to getting in the car and just GOING....Like you did, or I did or any number of young people did.... they have a year’s supply of groceries,THREE cell phones, playstation, Ipod, and god knows what else, AND designated place to stay WITH RELATIVES every night for 2 WEEKS.....JESUS!!!! There was a powwow with ALL the parents last weekend where the kids had to present a WRITTEN plan, and get peppered with questions from all the folks.... How EMBARRASSING!!! FOR EVERYBODY!!!! 

[insert your own screaming profanity directed at these so-called parents and their wussy children here—I can’t type any more without my blood pressure going off the charts...]

This morning my 5yo and I were looking at a plate that had pictures of different teapots on it.  I said that one teapot looked like it was from China.  Then she pointed to another teapot and said, “That one looks like it’s from New Jersey.” After I stopped laughing, I asked her if she knew that one of her close family members was from New Jersey.  She said “no,” so I told her, “Grandpa is from New Jersey!” She said, “Oh!  Does he speak New Jersey??” I told her, “Yes, as a matter of fact he does..........”

The only way I could think it would have been any funnier would have been if mom had asked “why do you think it’s from New Jersy?” and the 5yo had responded “‘cuz it’s butt-ugly!”

Jesus respond by telling a parable as was his custom after tossing back a couple of drinks.

The Kingdom of Heaven is like a man sitting on the bank of a great river dangling his feet in the cool running water. Suddenly a huge fish leaps from the water and is blown to the bank by a gust of wind. The fish begins to squirm and flop in terror

His two fish buddies swimming along side him are alarmed at their friends’ plight.

“Quickly, we must save Cecil!” They cry.

Both fish leap heroically only to be blown to the bank by a gust of wind, landing with loud thumps. Now all three fish are crying for help as they flop in fishy mortal terror.

“Help! Help!”

“Someone call 911”

“Does any one have a net or cell phone?”

The man awakes from his reverie long enough to remember that he has a net in the basket he brought along with him.

“Have no fear my little fish friends,” he says as he walks over to them in with the net in hand. The fish have little time to thank him as he scoops them up and places them in his basket. That night the man’s family enjoys filets slathered in tartar sauce and lemon served with a green salad and side of pilaf.

The Pharisees, upon hearing this, met secretly to plot against him as they understood the danger of putting their faith in someone who speaks in metaphors and fish tales.

05.13.08

Robert Rauschenberg, the irrepressibly prolific American artist who time and again reshaped art in the twentieth century, died Monday night at age eighty-two, Michael Kimmelman reports for the New York Times. A painter, photographer, printmaker, choreographer, onstage performer, set designer, and, in later years, even a composer, Rauschenberg defied the traditional idea that an artist stick to one medium or style. No American artist, Jasper Johns once said, invented more than Rauschenberg. Johns, John Cage, Merce Cunningham, and Rauschenberg, without sharing the same point of view, collectively defined this new era of experimentation in American culture. Apropos of Rauschenberg, Cage once said, “Beauty is now underfoot wherever we take the trouble to look.” The process—an improvisatory, counterintuitive way of doing things—was always what mattered most to him. “Screwing things up is a virtue,” Rauschenberg said when he was seventy-four. “Being correct is never the point. I have an almost fanatically correct assistant, and by the time she respells my words and corrects my punctuation, I can’t read what I wrote. Being right can stop all the momentum of a very interesting idea.”

In 1964, he toured Europe and Asia with the Merce Cunningham Dance Company, the same year he exhibited at the Whitechapel Gallery in London and the Venice Biennale as the US representative. That sealed his international renown. The Sunday Telegraph in London hailed him as “the most important American artist since Jackson Pollock.’’ He walked off with the international grand prize in Venice, the first modern American to win it. Major exhibitions followed every decade after that, including one at the Pompidou Center in Paris in 1981, another at the Guggenheim in 1997, and yet another that landed at the Metropolitan Museum in 2005.

“I usually work in a direction until I know how to do it, then I stop,” he said in an interview in the giant studio on the island of Captiva, a slender island off Florida’s Gulf coast, in 2000. “At the time that I am bored or understand—I use those words interchangeably—another appetite has formed. A lot of people try to think up ideas. I’m not one. I’d rather accept the irresistible possibilities of what I can’t ignore.”

He added: “Anything you do will be an abuse of somebody else’s aesthetics. I think you’re born an artist or not. I couldn’t have learned it. And I hope I never do because knowing more only encourages your limitations.”

For more, there are obituaries from the Los Angeles Times and The Guardian. (links removed in the copying process)

Anyway, long story short, I updated the site today and hopefully have everything working properly once again.  If you see anything suspicious or broken, let me know.

1.  Tuition, room/board, expenses.

Bay Area and Beantown charge approximately the same tuition and on-campus room/board.  Living expenses are also approximately the same.  Draw.

2.  Financial aid.

Beantown has awarded me a scholarship that will cover approximately 22% of my tuition costs over three years.  Bay Area has sent me paperwork to apply for a scholarship that will cover about 15% of my tuition costs over three years—assuming that I am one of the lucky scholarship recipients in the first place. Advantage:  Beantown.

3.  Job opportunities.

Bay Area does not allow first-year students to work.  However, Bay Area’s campus is close to the office of an attorney who has suggested that there might be work available for me in the area. ;) Beantown has a co-op program embedded in its curriculum:  students attend classes for 11 weeks, then work for the co-op for 11 weeks.  Depending on where the co-op places the student, pay ranges from fairly low (for public service work such as with the public defender’s or district attorney’s offices) to almost livable (for big corporate Satan-on-a-retainer firms).  Draw.

4.  Accessibility to off-campus amenities.

Bay Area has a public transit system, but so far it is an unknown quantity; the school literature says only that it’s *possible* to attend school for three years without requiring a car.  Beantown has the T.  Draw, with possible advantage to Beantown.

5.  Weather.

Okay, on this there’s no contest.  Advantage:  Bay Area.

6.  Food.

Both Bay Area and Beantown have abundance of swell places to eat.  Grocery situation uncertain without further study.  Rumors abound of swell roadside produce stands in Bay Area.  Draw, with possible advantage to Bay Area.

7.  Exercise.

Bay Area and Beantown both have huge, sexalicious fitness centers and swimming pools, all free for enrolled students.  Draw.

8.  Curricula, clinics, special programs.

This is where the choice can really make a body’s head hurt.  Bay Area has a community law center, an institute for redress and recovery for the victims of torture and other human rights abuses, the Northern California Innocence Project and several clinics and programs on sustainability.  Beantown has clinical courses on criminal advocacy, domestic violence and public health; a program on civil rights and restorative justice, and a project that sends students into Beantown-area public schools to teach constitutional literacy to high school students.  I am only scratching the surface of what both schools offer.  Draw, dammit, a complete and utter draw.

9.  Going home.

Going to Beantown will allow me to come home and see Lloyd at least once or twice a month.  Coming home from Bay Area will be considerably more expensive and difficult.  On the other hand, one could argue that being 3,300 miles away from home will force me to focus on my coursework, with no distraction.  Advantage:  Beantown, but since I have no idea whether I’ll be too embedded in first-year boot camp to enjoy any time at home, this might be a draw, too.

10.  Future practice, a/k/a Where do you want to be when you grow up?

I have been advised that the place where you pursue your education generally determines where you build your career (or did I get that backwards?) If I go to Beantown, the odds are good that I will work in Beantown or points nearby—or possibly as far south as Washington.  If I go to Bay Area, it would not be a stretch to consider one day living and working in San Francisco.  Draw, draw, draw.

But wait, there’s a wild card! I have yet to hear from two schools in New York City, one in Pittsburgh and one in Boulder.  If any one of those schools offers me a superior financial aid package, all of the previous considerations are hereby rendered null and void.

“Boot, how come you didn’t tell me The Cat Empire were so good? Huh, huh, huh? I love them!”
- Keith

We were in the Famous Spiegeltent and there were only 15 or so other people.  It was so intimate and chilled and funky, all at the same time.  Now they fill big halls and I still love them. 

Last time was at the Thebbie and they rocked. 

So, please accept my most sincere apologies for not telling you about them sooner.

The house just isn’t that big, so where to put the books was a challenge, but who in their right mind wouldn’t want a giant wrap-around bookcase headboard?

See you at the movies.

First thing I did was hunt down some free scriptwriting software to help with the writing.  If I’m going to being doing voices for several characters, I needed a clear and easy way to read and record.  What I came up with was Celtx, which looks like it’ll handle the job just fine.

The second thing that I noticed right away was that I was out of space before I even begin filming.  The Pinocchio office set took up the whole corner of my desk, and with the other sets I had in mind, it seemed like I would be constantly taking down and putting up the sets, not to mention what to do with them when they weren’t being used.  Then there was the problem of continuity.  All that moving around would make it almost impossible to keep things in the same place, for instance.  So the only logical solution (and here I’m thinking maybe brain meltdown again) was to clear out all the book shelves on the back wall to make room for a semi-permanent table of some sort, which would be big enough for at least four permanent sets, which would be enough to serve as the main backdrops for the filming.  The office, the courtroom, an outdoor scene of some sort, and some other place that the characters would visit on a regular basis.  So last night I started clearing out the books and will finish that up this morning.

And then there was the problem with characters.  Barbie dolls pose somewhat of a problem for a director whose co-stars are roughly 5” tall (6” in their actor’s guild profiles).  Plus, I don’t know how many of you know this, because I found out the hard way, but Barbie feet aren’t flat.  Apparently they aren’t supposed to stand up on their own but require the help of tiny plastic high heels, which I can guarantee you aren’t going to be found in the bargain bin down at Goodwill.

But where there’s a will, there’s a way.  Or maybe in this case it should be “where there’s an obsession, there’s a way,” because after thinking about it for a few days, I finally remembered those little, posable wooden figures down at the art shop.  They seemed perfect, so I hopped in the car and headed down there.  Thirty minutes later I was popping the first Barbie head onto the new frame.  Perfect.  The characters were now roughly the same height, were very posable, and easily stood on their own, leaving me now only with the task of finding little 4” outfits for the characters, which I’m hoping won’t be too hard.  I’m sure I’m going to have to do some fabricating on my own, which I’m prepared to do to.  Realism, you know.  Can’t forget realism.

If anyone has an interest in contributing any doll heads or doll clothing, little characters, toy props, or anything they might think would be nice to see in the Pinocchio show, I would be more than happy to have the help.  If interested, let me know and I’ll give you an address to mail things to.

Two different sizes for your viewing pleasure.

320 x 240 Quicktime (4.5 mb)

640 x 480 Quicktime (14.2 mb)