Clapboard - Full Frontal Nerdity

Yeah, so there he is. I think this should be his headshot, but I bet he won't agree with me. Hi there, studmuffin.

Anyway, check out my Manhattan at night on March 11th pictures, complete with reference photo from that morning. Amazing shots, if I do say so myself, and, even though you have to suffer through low quality images, I thought you might be interested in seeing the haunting effects that the lights had. In a lot of ways, they were hard to look at because of what they represented. Very nice tribute, tho, IMO.

Oh joy, oh rapture. Now I can get an eye or two to read it and tell me where the weakest places are before I try anything funny. Then it's third revision (maybe even a third full draft) and we'll go from there.

All hail retired porn stars and wannabe gangsters!

this is from an e-mail that I wrote earlier. I have no idea where it came from, but the subject matter interests me. Onwards.

"As for your Darwinism thoughts, I offer this: Darwin posited that the creature most fit to survive would be the one that got to procreate and continue the species. That means two things--first, if you are indeed surviving and thriving, you must be part of that group most fit to survive. Second, if you ARE in that "fit-to-survive" group, you should be having lots and lots of sex, not necessarily to continue the species, but to /practice/ continuing the species.

Of course, some scholars (myself included) would argue that human civilization was, at its inception, designed to thwart the then-undiscovered theory of "survival of the fittest" and that it's succeeded famously. Now what we have, these scholars would argue, is a society that nurtures the weakest links, in an effort to equalize the populace. In an unfortunate turn of events, though, the weakest links in the chain had developed their own survival method long before society grew up to protect them. This survival method was to have tons of equally-weak offspring and know that, through the law of averages, some of them would survive. Bad news for society, now that we're keeping these weak links alive through societally-implemented safeguards."

Why the hell do I write this stuff? Damn. This was time this morning that I could have been sleeping or working on Venture or even working out.

So I just got a call from some mysterious woman, which was a little unpleasant, because the call was on my cell phone (for which I pay minutes), the person on the other end was not very nice, and this means that someone has given out my cell phone number. Geh. That's unpleasant. So if it was you, please don't do it again. This, actually, was a tiny part of my cool weekend.

We shot our fight scene yesterday, first of all. Seven hours of pain and suffering, as well as a few kicks and punches (that caused the pain, really) were what it cost us. Now we edit and edit hard. I'm hoping that we can manage a few effects, but this rests heavily on the goodwill and willingness of Allan.
Also this weekend, Mike and I made it out to Culture Club (the most accessable, least-pretentious club in New York) with Melody, Julie and her friend from Florida (whose name I forget at the moment) and it was a good time. It's always a good time when we go out with the girls.

Anyway, all-in-all, it was a good weekend, even though after the fighting yesterday I was basically useless.

This is the shortest month of the year, making my rent-per-day average all high and shit. Oh well. Anyway, lease and new month's rent is due tomorrow, but I think I'll pay it tonight just for good measure. But this isn't the point of this rant. The point of this rant is this:

I've paid attention to the activities of New York women since I've moved here, and I've reached certain conclusions. The pertinent conclusion here is that New York women ain't into me. Why, then, am I going on a date (for what it's worth) tonight with someone I'm certain can't stay interested in me for more than a few minutes?

Okay, well, it's been hours and hours and I don't care about this thread anymore. But I think the answer is that I try hard to make each decision based on all the information--not just some of it. So I go out. And I try to have fun. Maybe this girl won't even hate me. We can hope.

So today's the day. I can't call you because you're in CT, discussing business with an old friend. I'm a little confused (as you were mean enough to whet my appetite a couple of days ago, then you dropped the subject like a hot potato), but that's okay. I hope your birthday is a fantastic one, and drive safely.

In other news, I fixed my door today, but the door itself is still all fucked up. Maybe it's time for a new door. Can I do that?

Check out my first video project in what feels like a million years. It's the start of what I hope will be a much larger effort--video credits for Max Bickford. It might be fun. And it's encouraging me to put some video on the internet again. Finally.

In related news, there are (and will continue to be, really) minor changes around the site. I haven't pointed them out so much, but some are major (and were difficult) like the framed board and the spin-off of the Venture site and some are minor, like the ongoing changes to the main page. Feedback is always appreciated, of course.

Sometime last night, Clapboard came back after like 40 hours of downtime. Think my host will reimburse me for time lost? Doubtful. Anyway, here's what I wrote that I wanted to post yesterday but couldn't because I couldn't log in.

there are things that I try to remember that I want to put on my web page next time I’m updating. these are things that i almost always forget. This morning, for example, I was thinking about things that I was going to do today, and, while I knew that my website was down, I knew that as soon as it went back up, I would want to have an update ready because it’d had been some days again, and I hate that. Maybe it’s time to get some wireless plan together that would allow me to dial in to an ISP and use my PC on the fly. We’ll see. That’s not really the problem, though—the problem is lack of time/inclination when I’m in front of my PC and I know it. Also, I don’t have anything interesting to report, complain about, or even rant about when I do sit down to work. Ah well, the trials of being me. Anyway, Kurt’s two weeks here are almost up. They’ve been fun and relatively productive, and lead me to know that it is still important to me to work with talented and dedicated people.
I’m in the process of learning about text bubbles and the like in Illustrator10 so i can finish the edits to Venture, issue one. It’s about that time, I think, for this thing to be out of my pipeline and into someone else’s world.

What dreams may come...

In another of my attempts to convince Kurt that the best thing for him would be to move here, I've managed to convince myself of the brilliance of a scheme that keeps us in Bay Ridge. I know that it's far from the city, but it's secure and it's inexpensive, and it has almost all the hallmarks of the great ideas that I've wanted to incorporate into my next place to live. This idea has everything but proximity to the city. I have yet to sell Kurt on the idea, and our fourth (who I have in mind but haven't approached yet) isn't at all certain, but I think it's do-able. Keep checking here for updates on this (and the rest) hare-brained scheme. Happy weekend.
Also, if I owe you an e-mail, I'll try to get to it this weekend. Things move slower when we have long-term guests and new duties at work.

I try again to crack down on my non-updating self, but it's been a very busy few days. My sister and Kelly came up this weekend, meeting me at work on Friday night. Of course, I already had plans on Friday night, so I had to leave the girls at my place while I went out. I think it was okay with them, though, because they seemed very tired from their busy week. My week ended last week with me moving over to do clearances and product placement, a job that I don't particularly want to do, but one that pays me 25% more per day, so I can't complain, especially since it's a temporary switch while Olga gets married.
Last night, Emily, Kelly and I went out to get sushi and had a good time--both girls tried their first bites of sushi and I'm proud of them.
Today, the girls left and Krol showed up, ready to replace me for the next couple of weeks at work. I worked some with Russ on our Bickford script, which is awesome, and then headed back here and wrote the initial treatment for Venture7. Time to finish that arc if it kills me.
I'm hoping that the insane busy-ness that has invaded my job for the last three weeks (with the one exception of last tuesday) will subside this week and allow me to get some things that I've been trying to do done. Kurt being here should at least help to give me some focus, since he's integrally connected with Venture and I feel like I owe it to him to get off my ass and do something with the amazing pages he's given me. Calls out to Harold the printer first thing tomorrow morning, anyway, to see what he thinks about my work.

First of all, happy birthday to my mom. I know it’s not the easiest of birthdays (I think that one might be 18 or 21), but there’s a lot still to learn, experience, and do. Here’s hoping that this year brings the rebirth of joy and hope. It will certainly contain love.

On my mind recently has been the fluid nature of friendship. I find myself increasingly wondering if the weirdness of friendship is a construct of the adult world or just a naturally-evolving organism that has never reared its mysterious head to me before. I look upon my friendships, both past and present, and I wonder what connects them all. I also wonder if by plotting the points at which people decided that I no longer fit into their lives I could learn some greater truth about myself. I think that in a lot of ways, the people that choose to be around me shape my consciousness, and as much as I would like to believe that I choose the people with whom I am close, I have the creeping—and ever-present—suspicion that the facts are really exactly the opposite of that. Now, rationalism tells me that one’s friends can only choose one 50% of the time, because in every relationship there are two people (in great relationships there can be three or more, but this isn’t the place for that kind of talk), and each has to choose the other as s friend. By choose, I don’t mean to say that the decision is always (or even often) an active one—no, most of the time I think it’s passive on both accounts. Friendships seem forged by the ease of conversation, the comfort-levels of the silences, and the confluences of habits and entertainment. There are people in my life with whom friendship comes so easily that I can hardly define what keeps us together so tightly. There are people with whom I used to get along who have chosen to leave my circle and left me confounded. I can’t remember ever choosing to erase someone from my list of friends, so I can’t understand the motivation for doing it, but I can only guess that maybe I did some unspeakable act or something that I wasn’t aware of. It’s this kind of thing that makes me wonder. There was a time a little more than a year ago when some of my oldest friends decided (some independently, even) that they didn’t want my company anymore, and then dropped me from their lists. This has happened one time again, this time on a much smaller and less important scale, since then, and somehow, it bothered me anyway. I think part of it is that someone with whom I was friends for ten years can never really be someone I don’t care about, and I will always be happy for their successes, and, should the time come that they want me as a friend again, I know we can manage it. It’s the newer people, the ones I don’t know as well or care as much about, that stick to me at the moment. I think it’s because I’m not used to not caring if someone wants me as a friend or not, but since these people are newer in my life, I’m much more likely to chalk them up to people who were too shallow (or unwilling) to consider me as a real friend. Some, maybe, were misfires—people that I couldn’t have gotten along with anyway, for any length of time, and were thus doomed to fall away. But they’re not all like that. Also, what of the people that I have fallen out of touch with over time due to the distance of space and time? I wonder what effort and imagination that kind of relationship requires, and what it would mean to try to maintain some kind of link across the ether. I think, in this case, specifically of friends now abroad whom I have no idea how next I’ll see. Also in this category are the people that I’ve lost, having met them on trips and lost them to the sheer size of the United States.

So what’s to be done? Awareness is the best defense, I think. There’s nothing else I can do, really—I can just be aware of what’s going on in my head and in my life and try to reconcile the two to the best of my ability.

I also notice, reading one of the few things that I have written by my dad, how strikingly similar my writing style is to the way his was. It makes me wish I had more of his missives. I wonder if writing style (or feel for the language or something) is genetic somehow. That’s a rant for another day.

And this is my friend Paula in Australia on her graduation day. I knew that if I didn't put the thing about the board in the headline, no one would notice. It's a little late for congratulations (this stuff all happened a couple of weeks ago), but I'll say it anyway--congrats!

As the week begins (and the Patriots try to stay ahead in the superbowl), I consider the things that have to be on my list of things to do. There will have to be writing (Venture, Oral Pleasures, Bickford, and DSF) at the top of the list--maybe the only thing on my list. That seems like a lot of writing. If I wasn't so tired, I'd start that list tonight.

Well, it’s been a weird weekend. I left right from work for Allentown on Friday at about eight PM, which got me here around ten. About a half an hour after I got here, I got a call from my roommate asking me if I had been home before i got here, which, of course I hadn’t. Turns out that we had a break-in at my apartment. What the hell. Long story short, someone kicked in our door, went through one of Mike’s drawers and through my file cabinet, and left without taking a thing. Now, I’m writing this from Drew's place in Allentown, so I can’t be sure that nothing is gone, but Jesus—no DVDs, no computers, no CD players or CDs, not even any alcohol that we had stocking our fridge. So what the hell does it all mean? God only knows, I guess.

Anyway, I’ve had a good time this weekend (despite being an insensitive ass and bringing up the topic of relationships and women around Drew’s ex-girlfriend while we were out drinking), but the whole time there has been this pall over my mind as I wonder about the break-in and what I’m going to do to make sure that it doesn’t happen again. One thing? Renter’s insurance. If I had an internet connection here, I’d be researching it right now. Another? I'm going to put the lock back on my house myself. And something else, but I don’t know what it is right now.

It's come down to this.
February is the last month for 107 Browns Terrace--I can hardly believe it. I had some amazing time there, and it makes me sad to know that the last people that moved in will be moving out in a month. There have been eleven residents in four years in that five bedroom mansion.
What follows are pictures of the people that made my particular stay (I wasn't even there for half its life) as great as it was. They take a long time to load, so be patient. They're worth it, though, so check 'em out.

the pictures -->

I'm finally getting around to updating again. It really doesn't feel like five days. It's not like I didn't have the time--i barely got off teh couch on Sunday, but i just somehow didn't manage to write anything. Is it a sign of weak moral fiber when i intend to do something and don't? Even though a lot of us do it, it doesn't make me feel any better about the situation. I've been working on lowering the percentage of things that I 'intend' do do but continually put off, either by not starting the thing in the first place or just concentrating on following through. It's not easy, and I find myself making lists sometimes (something that my mom had to make a resolution one year to do less of), but thus far, it's working out okay. I mean, I'm far from perfect, of course, and i didn't think that it would be a learning curve, but i'm learning now that re-educating myself to be efficient isn't as easy as just deciding to do it. SO I make lists. I try to mentally schedule things that i should be doing in my spare time, and i think i'm getting things done. Eternally on that list, though, is more regular updates, and you can see how well that's worked. but i'm trying. i'll take a monthly average and see if i've gotten better in the last six months sometime soon. Then you'll know how I'm doing.

The weekend was fun--out in the city two nights in a row! I'm so proud of me--i was actually social, even though i've been trying to spend less money this year, too. it managed to work this weekend, so i'm happy about that. Props to everyone involved in my weekend with special props to Russ for being too cool for school and bullshitting with me for hours and hours. That's one of my favorite things to do. So thanks.

So here's your first look at the space station Melpomine. Pretty amazing, right? Allan's decision to color the book blew me away, both for the quality of the final product and for the effort and time that it's going to require of him.

As you can now tell, the story takes place in space (aboard the station pictured, mainly). It is an epic love story set in a tense time of international crisis and extraterrestrial discoveries.

I'm looking forward to the opportunity that Allan's particular style affords my storytelling and to the opportunity to bring this story to its fruition.

If this image whets your appetite the way it does mine, let me know on the board--maybe we can prod Allan into giving us more art faster.

Over the weekend, I got the first DSF page from Allan. The artwork looks amazing and it's in color! Talk about breaking the bank.... I'm looking forward to seeing more of his stuff in full color, etc. We'll have to get together this week to hash out some final details, though, so after that, expect to see some samples here and likely at codicspace.com.

Also in Joint Venture Comics news is the reworking of Issue1 for publication. I tried to go into Kurt's work and check it out, only to find out that I didn't have Illustrator9 installed. Damnit. I'll have to install Illustrator10 sometime (maybe this afternoon) and get to work. I'm looking forward to rethinking the work I did three years ago, making the thing easier to understand and better to read. The samples that I got from the printer jazzed me up--I just hope that he'll deign to print my work. I'll keep you updated.

Kris and I at Jodi's New Years' party. I got these a few days ago, but for some reason have failed to put them up. So here. Kris is the insane looking guy.

Happy Birthday to Mike! I'm sorry that it's for yesterday. He's now exaclty as close to ten years old as he is to fourty. Gee. That puts things in an interesting perspective for those of us who think that we're not growing after we hit our mid twenties. I can't have stopped growning because there's so much left that I have to learn, to do, before I'm even remotely satisfied. By the time I'm fourty, I expect that that phase of my growth will have ended and another begun. At least, I hope it has.

Yesterday, I spent the day helping a friend move stuff around and then watching BLACK HAWK DOWN. Good flick, but I don't think I want to watch it again. It made me very contemplative--I kept thinking about the experience of the people that I love who have been to war--not a good sign for a Saturday night.

Anyway, other stuffis bound to happen today (luandry, for one), and likely I'll weekend recap this evening or tomorrow mornning. We'll see.

"The important thing is this, to be able to, in every moment, sacrafice what we are for what we could become." -Dubois

While erratic updates are what I'm known for, I'm hoping that this will someday become a thing of the past. Now that I have a laptop, I can't even complain that I don't have access to a computer long enough to write anything. It's just not true anymore. And I don't lack stuff to say (anyone who knows me will tell you that). I think I lack the focus to make it happen in anything that resembles a permanent way. What I need is a voice recorder that creates digital files of my thoughts that is glued to my hand so i can never lose it, set it down, or go anywhere without it. This recorder would also have to turn my messages into text and output them to a PC. I would do the rest. Of course, then you'd have HUGE updates every day that would take longer to read than you'd have time for, so we'd really be back to square one, just in the opposite direction. I guess the fact is that no one reads here either way. Well, almost no one.
Talking about my movie this morning with Andy psyched me up for the thing, and that's good. That means that I'll move my ORAL PLEASURES scrit to my laptop, print it tomorrow at work and hopefully come up with something to do with the third act. I will. It's just a matter of time.
In other news, with Krol on his way up here (metaphorically) I'm psyched to get some VENTURE ONE reconsideration done. I think I'll see about that tonight and tomorrow, too. I need more text and better text and I need them now. I also need to think about how I'm doing the reworking of Issue3 becuase I have samples on the way to the studio. That's good stuff.
This weekend, I either travel somewhere or I sit home and I write. The latter should be my decision (and it probably will be, as it's cheaper and doesn't need a friend to be more fun), but I like to travel, I have a production car, and I want to see some friends. We shall see. Maybe I'll travel somewhere that I can write.
Thanks to Allan for the quote. Codicspace is a fantastic site.

The problem with redefining the way you consider a thing as ubiquitous as adulthood is that, for all your trying and all your consideration, there’s no way to prove any of your new theories right. With your original definition, you can ignore the possibility that you might be wrong, that there might be inconsistencies, you can pretend that your definition fits all cases, right up until that point when you can’t. There seems to be a point with the indefinable after which it’s hopeless to try. Adulthood is just one such substance. Everywhere I go now I see people and things that seem to fly in the face of my new definitions of adulthood, things that even challenge my so-ingrained-as-to-be-all-but-invisible original, organic definitions of adulthood. Generally speaking, the things that I define without meaning to, the things that I just understand, stay defined, stay understood. I understand them because I watch the things, people and events that make them up and I can follow how they all fit together into a definition without really trying to. This all works fine when the object, idea, or type of person is distinct, unique, remote, or somehow removed from my life. The problem with my organic understanding of adulthood is that I now have to live through it, and living through something gives me a familiarity with the subject-to-be-defined that I don’t get with a lot of other indefinable ideas. The other end of the spectrum are things that I failed to understand a long time ago, failed to organically and subconsciously fit into my understanding of the universe, and decided, for the good of my sanity (and for the of my readers) to leave vague. Love falls neatly into this category. This may be the only category of mine into which love actually falls (that it’s the category of ‘intentionally-undefined’ is ironic only until the irony butts against my admission of failure in the matter, after which time it becomes a small victory for humility and is allowed to drop). Love is something that makes people do crazy things—like ice skate, or sometimes not too crazy things—like investing in a college fund, makes them serenade a girlfriend in front of a crowded bistro, or whisper to her in the private of a bedroom; sometimes love just makes us do something, and sometimes again, we just do nothing at all. And because love doesn’t always make our hearts race (sometimes a quiet, subdued thumping is plenty), our words lost (I’m almost always loquacious), or our stomachs knotty, I understand that I can’t understand this beast. This fact became clear to me the first time I fell in love, and subsequently, in and out of love, I’ve understood better that I’ll just never get it. It helps that I accepted my limitations early on, however. The dawning of adulthood is no time to try to accept another indefinable. This time, I can use all the definitions I can get. Example: people ask me what a producer does. I try to tell them that he gets vegetables, mostly, for customers who visit the supermarket. Wait, that look on your face? You thought it was funnier than most people do. Anyway, telling someone that producers make movies is too vague, and telling them that they hire the director isn’t correct enough of the time to be right. Producing is making something happen—but WHAT you’re making happen makes all the difference, because cows produce cow pies and factories produce cars (and smoke), and no one calls that movie making. So my career goal remains safely anonymous. Love and work, that’s two biggies down. What’s left? Self, it seems. Of course, try to define self without love, work, and now adulthood, and what have you left? Thus far, it seems we have ‘loquacious.’

Why this ridiculous obsession with definitions? I don’t know. It helps, I think, to understand the world in which I am trying to make my way, and the way people normally do that is by defining the things they see. Maybe there’s another way (it’s beginning to look like there’d better be), maybe it won’t matter to me tomorrow. We shall see. Maybe I’ll stumble onto the definition of all of life tomorrow. I’ll keep you posted.

Yesterday, my computer got an annual overhaul by way of a reformat and clean installs of XP and all its related paraphenalia. I did almost nothing else on my list of things to do, but it *is* nice to have things in order on my workstation, anyway. I also completed one reformat of an old machine that may or may never run linux (did Packard Bell have a deal with Microsoft?), but will definitely idle the film-411 chat room.

Today I catch an old movie (and maybe a new one, too) and try to get some more sleep. Maybe I can also get some financial stuff accomplished today, too.

And so it begins. Or so it began, anyway. There is a lot to do this year, a lot on my vague list of "things to do so that i feel like i'm accomplishing something." I think I'll start that list by planting myself in front of the TV to watch movies until I fall asleep. Then I'll start my list on the world's vastly most popular day to start lists--tomorrow.