good news!
i have awesome seats for the wilco concert tomorrow night.

bad news!
i have my original two tickets for sale to the wilco show tomorrow night. if you want them, they are $26 + service charge.

as soon as i've sold them, this message gets taken down. act on this fabulous offer now!

the rock star i've asked about appearing in the hidden is meeting with me on sunday afternoon.

i'm pretty nervous.

then again, he thought "alphabet" was beautiful, and, well, that's a good sign, right?

the first thing i want to accomplish now that my grandmother has passed on is to finish the film. i want to finish shoting by thanksgiving and have a rough cut by new years, and hopefully finish the damned thing -- sound, print and all -- by march or april of next year. so many people in my family have died after leading what they might see as an unfulfilling life (my grandmother and my father among them) and i want to succeed, not only for myself, but in memory of those that may not have gotten the chance.

the second, easier thing i want to do is talk to my uncle and his wife about their lives growing up, and world war 2. i vowed that before my grandmother died i would sit down with her and talk to her about what it was like to be an adolescent and young adult during such a tumultuous time, in part to sate my own curiosity and in part to make her feel worthwhile. unfortunately, that opportunity never came to pass. my uncle les is eighty and though he's the picture of health, he's also getting on in years; i don't want to let him pass me by.

i have a few small nagging regrets, things that feel like pinched nerves, a lazy eye, a strategically torn stocking -- annoying enough to be noticeable, but not so annoying that i know how to deal with them in a concrete way. there are times when i feel like i'm going through the motions of grief. the truth is, i've experienced four deaths in the past eight years -- my nana, my grandfather, my own father, and now my grandma. three of those deaths came after old age long hospitalizations for illnesses that paved only one path, and i know how to react to that grief.

it's way too late to be on the computer.

it's way too early to be thinking about a flier for the hidden, which isn't completed yet.

i shouldn't be thinking about the film anyway.

BUT!

i want the flier to look like a cross between this picture (for the graphic) and this poster (in terms of layout). as i said, i'm thinking WAY TOO FAR in advance, but it's nice to know i have these ideas rattling around in my head.

i'm also thinking quite a bit about sound design. as readers may know, this is the first piece i'm working on with a line of sync sound. i'm thinking about using a song in the film, but cutting it up -- looping a drum beat here or an organ line there -- and using radio fuzz/interference at points when i want to fade out the music or don't need it. unfortunately i can't think of any films that have used this technique before, and i don't know how well this would work, or wouldn't -- if it would be too gimmicky and draw attention away from the visuals. this could be interesting.

i'm calling the man i want to play ulysses tomorrow night. luck? LUCK!

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in times of despair, it's nice to know i'm that endearing. :)

thanks, everyone, for such kind words. i'm trying to take comfort in the fact that my granny lived a long life, and that in some way death is a relief after the long illness with which she suffered. my thoughts right now are on family, though not the way you might expect; it's hard to explain now, and i think i'll wait until after the funeral to talk about it.

in the meantime, savor the art of howard chandler christy, artist of ww1 propaganda posters (among other visual treats). ever wonder who did the "gee! i wish i were a man!" recruitment poster? well, now you know.

incidentially, the mermaid avenue records are perhaps the greatest argument in favour of file-sharing ever. the wilco tracks are great (i'm thinking of chopping up "remember the mountain bed" for use in the hidden), but oh man does a little bit of billy bragg go a long way. (and any anti-fascist song will bring out the worst in mr bragg). remember that song he was singing on tour with the barenaked ladies, "this space between us"? i wish he'd record that instead of political tunes.

my grandma died.

more later.

chriscat is in town this weekend! we've been painting the town red; looked at the mary baker eddy library, attended a film night at the oni gallery, and caught a performance by the rock band count zero. i also took some steps towards maybe screening "alphabet" in boston again...i have a feeling it will probably get rejected, but it's good to try, anyway.

as a side note: i have found the man i want to play ulysses. great googly-moogly, he would be perfect for the role. everyone wish me luck. i totally hope he says yes. this short film needs to be less ishtar and more yankee hotel foxtrot.

is this man his generation's answer to kumar pallana?

(collective groan from the friends list: "no, not that AGAIN!" keep whining like that and the capybara gets it. ^_-)

at some point i should type up the current hidden saga. right now i am at an internet cafe and can't be bothered. but if anyone knows a good actor in boston who might be able to help me out, send him along.

i've been away from here for far too long.

the reader's digest version of my life recently...for all intents and purposes the lead actor in my movie has dropped out (for completely understandable reasons, too, but i won't get into that in a public post). i started my job and had the worst day of my life yesterday. i had to endure a long phone conversation with a dear friend of mine in which he filled me in with aspects of his life that made me uncomfortable, further winding me up after a bad week. georgelazenby dissed me so that he could see...um...that woman (you know who).* i'm hoping i can still make this movie and that i still have my job.

it hasn't all been bad -- i've spoken on the phone with allegraslade a few times in the past week or so, seen igby goes down, cooked myself soup, and began to teach myself to knit. i also finally sat down and watched the company of wolves, which was a-ok but should have been much better -- the imagery pregnant with meaning and short on explanation shot itself in the foot, but watching angela carter's stories brought to some form of cinematic life was really interesting. (okay, it looked like a feature-length version of a kate bush video).

how have all of you been?

---
* = i know he didn't dis me expressly to see her, since she was playing at an event where he was in attendance and i forgot to give him my cell phone number. it just sounds funnier that way. :)

i spoke to the nice people with the canoes this morning and found out that in order to pull this off i have to wait a few weeks. this is bad because i had told the cast we'd shoot this weekend, but waiting to shoot that portion until, say, the weekend of 5 october may also be good because it means that i can pull together things like getting the canoe from central mass to the a street beach in boston, finding out if my camera is working (fingers crossed), getting a more effective craft service scheme, and so on. my hope is that my cast will not abandon me -- we keep scheduling the shoot and it keeps getting pushed. i feel like friggin' james cameron, but without the ego so large it needs its own zoipcode.

the good news is that i can go out to nyc this weekend and make a valiant effort to lift chriscat's spirits, and maybe even see charlotte carter read. and stuff -- i'd like to hang with rollerboogie at some point, too. i'm hoping to pick up a record by the gloria deluxe (not to be confused with the sheila divine or the gloria record) at soft skull...i need new music, and from the sound clips i've heard they seem like a band i'd love. (neverthelike, i might have to choose the record with the song most like "grist for the mill", so if you have any suggestions...).

( wilco obsessiveness beyond this point )

so which gloria deluxe album is good to start off with?

(you all thought i'd put "little man in a canoe", didn't you? rest assured, we here at pixievision are above such sophomoria as references to the day-glo abortions...)

after having a horrific experience with the wooden canoe heritage assholes association i called the great canadian canoe company (conveniently located in sutton, mass), who are allowing me to use one of their canoes in exchange for a credit in the film. the people there were really nice and willing to help me out. now i just need to get out to sutton.

wow, i didn't think i'd have my first experience with product placement on a student film. i'm a corporate whore!

but with very good reason: i started work this week and started shooting the hidden (you know, the mythological script i've been nattering on about at great length). i completed shooting the first and second scene at fort warren on george's island this weekend with the acting talent of phil and nora, and behind-the-scenes help that included clearmind, a laid back presence who was able to see the absurdity of the situation.

unfortunately, i'm still slightly behind the curve on shooting, as car problems hampered the first day of shooting. if anyone needs to borrow a canoe for a shoot, i would advise against working with these assholes, as they fucked me over even after i called the people who were going to help me out and then called them that night to tell them what happened. karma is a bitch; may they never find themselves in a situation in which they are unable to get themselves from point a to point b and no one will cut them slack. (wow, it feels really good to get that off my chest.) let's hope that chriscat's assistance will help me find something, eh?

after seeing the wilco movie again i really want to walk up to their bass player after a show and say something like "so what do YOU think of richard feynman's quantum-electrodynamic theory?"

pretentious? yes, but it beats the hell out of "i have nothing to sign. will you sign my ass?"

your boss shows up half an hour late for work, you end up on a bus with a guy who has an epileptic seizure, you run into half the people you know on your way to the movie, and then you find out you did something stupid with your camera which resulted in the lab not making a print of your test reel.

thankfully the "something stupid" is fixable. because i'm so used to super-8 i forgot to put the compression plate in place before i started shooting my test reel. this resulted in my film having a weird, skiddy effect. i'm going to try and figure out where the compression plate is tonight and load the camera, and then q-tip from the lab is going to make sure i did it right. (this is really an excuse for q-tip to scope out my sexy scoopic. really, you'd think after being in the same room as the same kind of camera murnau used on sunrise would make one jaded about movie cameras, but there you go.) hopefully i'll put that into place and be ready to shoot come saturday afternoon. god, i hope all that works out...

oh, and spirited away was great, easily one of the best films of the year for me. the animation was of course beautiful (something you've come to expect with miyazaki), but the synthesis of all the different greek myths (most notably orpheus and eurydice and cupid and psyche) and fairy tales (baba yaga and, oddly, the secret garden, among many others) brought a lot of things together that have been crossing my mind with regard to folklore and the creative process and stuff. if i can't make my movie this weekend, i will eat my hat.

this weekend was really, really fun. if there's anyone who does almost everything right -- from smoochin' to impressing my roommates to bringing the right movie down from nyc -- it's chriscat. unfortunately most of the entertainment outside of the apartment wasn't all that. we saw a play by one of chekhov's contemporaries and it was...well, it wasn't chekhov. we also took in a screening of the seven samaurai, which was beautiful but which left me feeling restless after a while. but hanging out with my big sweetie was ever so enjoyable. :)

so. girls.

tell me about shoes.

tell me about your shoes: your most and least favourite pairs. why do you not like your least favourite pair? what repels you from a pair of shoes -- the look, the feel, what?

what do you think of other girls' shoes?

what does the phrase "shoe thief" mean to you?

(i do not mean to leave the boys out. girls have a special relationship with their shoes, you understand -- and i don't necessarily mean this in an imelda marcos way. ^_-)

go here.

thank you.

with a job in a the-ay-ter and a semi-regular byline, who needs sammiches?