Swashbuckling Goodness!!!!

With the release of Pirates of the Caribbean a couple of weeks away I decided to indulge with Errol Flynn and The Sea Hawk!

The first adventure star was at his best in these swashbucking pirate movies such as Captain Blood and Against All Flags. Yeah I know there were a lot of years between those two movies but still it didn't matter.

Flynn was at his best as a pirate.

Flynn was a great actor. He defined action and adventure in his time. His Robin Hood was incredible. Kevin Costner? Please, brother should have known better than to trample upon the sacred ground of Flynn.

Flynn played the part. More than that he made you believe that he lived as a pirate in his spare time. That being a swashbuckler came as natural to him as breathing does, well and drinking to him.

He lived a very fast life and moderation was a rarely used word around him.

Yeah Johnny Depp makes for a very entertaining pirate he really does. But he'll never be Errol Flynn.

I hope that if the Pirates of the Caribbean accomplishes just one thing, other than showing us Keira Knightly again, it will bring about more interest in the classic films of pirates and tall ships!

Britney Spears: America's New Tabloid Whore

Is there anything this former star won't do to get into a publication?

After no one was interested in buying her babies pics for her asking price she settled on selling them for, I believe, a paltry five thousand dollars?!?!

That doesn't even cover K Fed's weekly pot bill.

There has been so much media attention paid to her falling star status that one has to wonder exactly how much one can take. If she should ever not be pregnant again in the next few years and put out another album odds are it will tank.

I swear I thought she was hot at one time but now she is just picking up one road kill for supper away from being that anonymous hillbilly in the trailer park no one likes.

Britney, you star has been so tarnished that I think I'm starting to feel sorry for you. In the same way I feel for Molly Ringwald, Judd Nelson, Gary Coleman or Philip Michael Thomas.

I mean who wouldn't want to have a movie project with those four in it?!?!?!

Deadwood Is Rocking!!!!

What a great show!

The third episode has gone by and the characters are just as profane and evil as ever!

Gerald McRaney's George Hearst is a perfect match for Ian McShane's Al Swearengen. It would seem that the race is on to see who is more evil. The plots turn and twist and take time to digest.

Powers Boothe's Cy Tolliver is devious and has flittered around the edges and his motivations are unclear at this point and yet he seems a cat ready to pounce into his storyline with wild abandon.

Brad Dourif's Doc Cochran steals near every scene with his compassionate yet rough bedside manner. His character provides the soul and depth in a bloody camp that lacks such.

So far the main characters from the previous two seasons, Seth Bullock and Sol Star have taken a bit of a backseat to the drama and tension between Swearengen and Hearst.

This has been rumored to be the last season of Deadwood and if it should leave cable then there will be a huge niche to be filled for those of us who enjoy an adult themed western.

To Burn Or Not To Burn

Anyone who knows me knows that I am a great lover of our beloved flag, Old Glory, I take with a personal interest the proposed Constitutional Amendment to ban flag burning.

I dearly love both and they are not mutually exclusive but should one protect the other?

For the uninformed The Constitution does not grant us rights, it boldly declares that we are born with these rights and endowed with them from our Creator. The Constitution places restrictions on the government and restricts Congress from infringing on these rights, it does not give us rights nor does the government.

The American Flag.

The beacon of hope and freedom for billions throughout our brief history. Our banner has been carried into war torn countries to bring peace and it has cleaned out rat hole countries of corruption and moral decay. When the two super powers met face to face our flag prevailed to spread freedom to countries that had never experienced freedom.

It brought The Wall down and encouraged people to govern themselves instead of tyrants.

Our flag never bows to another.

It boils my blood to see our flag displayed in a manner that does not befit it. When the blue field of stars is not in the correct corner, when a flag is out at night without a light to grace it, when it is ripped and torn but the owners refuse to replace it out of neglect. Them's fightin' words to me.

I honestly don't feel that there should be an amendment to ban the desecration of our flag.

I shall defend your right to burn our flag.

Don't do it around me and if I catch you I'm going to put a hurting on you for such a disgraceful action.

Sadly though there are places in this very country where such an act would be encouraged if not praised. Freedom of political speech is what sets up apart from many nations, we can protest, we can assemble a group of people to tell our side without the fear of being imprisoned for decades like what routinely happens just a short distance from Florida.

We can speak out against our leaders if the need arise without fear of being executed for our views.

As distasteful as the burning of our flag is to me I believe that the people of our country would do all the protecting of our flag should it fall into the hands of some unwashed hippy communist for burning.

Simply put, if we ban the physical desecration of our flag what other freedoms, no matter how horrible, should we restrict next if our leadership shifts to such a radical point of view that our flag and freedom becomes meaningless?

Filmmaking Meeting Tonight

Chris laid out exactly what he plans on doing with the next feature that is in the works.

With the auditions coming up on July 15th, they are really nearly around the corner!

It is a very exciting time for me. There are a lot of projects on the horizon and the possibility of one more from one of the actors I have worked with before. He plans on directing his own project and has requested help in a round about way.

The more I have thought about this I would be excited to do it and help him out. He plans on doing all of the actual ground work and just needs the camera and operator.

That should keep me free to work with the other two projects as well, depending on his shooting schedule. It is a four page script so I don't believe it would take that much to actually shoot.

I am excited my friends!

Peckinpah's Violent Ballet

Sam Peckinpah.

The name alone screams westerns. A hard living, hard drinking man who wrote, produced, and directed some of the most violent movies of his time.

He worked with some of the biggest stars of their time, well of all time. McQueen, MacGraw, Holden, Johnson, Heston, Borgnine, Hoffman, Kristofferson, Robards, Coburn, Hauer, even Bob Dylan and a hundred more.

Take his signature film for example, The Wild Bunch. The story of a group of men who had outlived their time and as the story unfolded they knew it. The blending of the old west with the turn of the 20th century in Mexico.

Yeah the story is simple on the surface but you can see how each man starts to come to grip with the idea that their time is now over with. They deal with that realization by being who they are, hard and violent men.

What is ironic is that Peckinpah stuck with the western genre while Hollywood was forgetting about it more and more. The same as many of the characters in his masterpiece. Men who had no place anymore in the world around them.

Sam Peckinpah knew how to film hard and violent men. He didn't care to make them sympathetic. He didn't care to treat his women with kid gloves either. What he did care about was the story and his art, well that is about all he cared about if you read many of the stories about him.

He is probably more responsible for modern violence in films than nearly any other director of that time. He influence can be seen in a thousand movies today.

Last Hurrah At Winner's

The club that we usually go to after work will soon close within a couple of days.

Since last night was payday Friday a group of us got together for our last hurrah before they move to a new and very out of the way location.

I arrived after work at about 4:30 and left for some supper at around 10ish.

We all had a great time but I just had to get something to eat! So Taco Mayo fit the bill on the way home.

It turns out that my friend who was in Hard Drive Cafe, Chris Scheffe, has developed a small following around town because of his line! He has been having a good time with people knowing who he is on site!

Go Chris Go!!!!

Vista Headache

I'm sitting at the library where I work and now posting this.

I've has a huge Vista headache the past two days and finally last night after 11 p.m. finished re-installing XP64 back onto my home system. I was able to install Vista on my home system and had it running for about twenty minutes before I decided to install the Nvidia drivers which didn't install for some reason.

My brief impression was that Vista is very pretty to look at and that was with the default non-optimized drivers.

I do believe that I'm going to wait until a more stable beta is released before jumping on the Vista install bandwagon again.

You have no idea how frustrating it was to install, reformat, reinstall, rereformat, and then finally give up after it wouldn't install only to have it install and work for.....twenty minutes.

So, the first of the year and the official release date just isn't that far away to go through all of that again.

That was two days of headache my friends that I just don't feel like doing again....well sober anyway.

The USA was eliminated from the World Cup today. Ya know something? I don't blame anyone for not noticing.

If they had a decent chance at something like winning then it might be different. People would have set up and noticed that we did something other than two losses and a tie. It is like the Cincinnati Bungles out there representing the country.

There is still a party though and that is what the World Cup is for us now, the guest that no one really wanted to show up but did anyway, well now that guest is going home early.

The Anti-Che

Are you sick of seeing all of those kids with Che shirts on?

If you don't know who Ernesto "Che" Guevara is, look it up. He was Castro's mass murdering lapdog thug. He ran Castro's prison full of dissidents and labor camps. He presided over the execution squads with ruthless efficiency and dedication.

Che has now become the t-shirt of choice for the young and uninformed who probably don't even know who or what he was.

Who are the ignorance infested kids wearing Che shirts?
I'd venture to guess they are mostly teens, that has been my experience anyway, and if they were challenged they probably couldn't even find Cuba on a map. They should also sue the government for their lack of education.

If they should actually do a modicum of research they would find out that Che was a real person. He was instrumental in the success of the Cuban revolution and that he despised capitalism.

So it strikes me as an ultimate irony that his image sells millions of shirts and that probably 98% of the people who wear them don't realize that he would probably hate them for being American.

He was a pure communist and the greatest poster child for why communism fails every single time. He hated personal freedoms and was dedicated to the state. There was no concept of the individual in his world and no mercy for anyone who viewed the world differently than he did.

He and his policies were also failures on a massive scale.

As loved as he is by the delusional youth of today he was equally despised by the people he lorded over, starved, and killed.

It probably won't be long before Mao, Pol Pot, Abu Musab al-Zarqawai, Ayatollah Khomeini , or even Osama become the next huge shirt seller.

They are the same person my friends.

No Go With FX

I guess we didn't make the final 20 in the FX Network Contest.
They were supposed to notify you over the weekend and well they didn't.

Their loss for sure! Hard Drive Cafe has more potential to connect with this generation of internet users than any pilot they decide to produce.

It could still be done but it would be difficult to assemble the cast and use the place frequently. The shorts would have to be a bit longer to make sense, approaching the 10 minute mark at most.

This could go down into the "let's revisit this idea a little later" file. I'd have to test the willingness of the cast and location owner to accomplish a steady diet of Hard Drive Cafe shorts.

I'm up for the filming and editing though!!!!

Superman?

The new Superman movie could very well be the biggest of the year and probably the most expensive.

So here we are just a couple of weeks away from the release and I've only seen a handful of trailers on TV.

I have seen very little promotion of the movie.

It is weird for such what could possibly be a huge movie to see so little hype behind it.

Maybe it is because the producers think that the movie will speak for itself or maybe, and I hope not, it is a huge bomb.

You heard about King Kong, Spiderman, X-Men, the Matrix sequels, even MI:III for months in advance but not this movie? I just don't understand the logic behind this lack of promotion.

I've Tried To Watch The World Cup

But it is very hard to get into.

I understand that it is a huge worldwide party and that soccer is the world's most popular sport.
Well supposedly, I think it is just because the rest of the world can't build a fast car or play football.

Yeah I have given the World Cup a fair shot. Yawned a bit but I'm trying to understand it. I figure that if I "got it" then I wouldn't yawn as much.

So far it seems that the US Team has been a bust. We got destroyed by the Czech Republic and tied Italy....sigh....

I kept thinking we would have an easier time scoring goals if we sent Ronnie Lott to take out their goalie and I am having a hard time rooting for a tie.

There should be a sudden death in soccer. No one wants to see a tie. You play ninety minutes , work your hearts out, get all rough and tumble with the other team and for what? Each team gets a point?

What kind of victory is that?

I want a winner!!!!

America didn't tolerate ties in the NCAA and we don't tolerate them in the pros. NHL?
Please, I mean sports that people watch.

You don't see a tie in NASCAR! We invented drag racing, two cars and one wins!!!!

I am 100% positive America didn't invent soccer.

With all of my problems with the MLB, you'll NEVER see a tie. One team has to win and there is no time limit!!!!

I like a big party though and as far as I can tell that is the best thing about the World Cup. It is like the world's tail gate party.

Other countries live soccer, apparently because they just don't have much else to root for like we do. No I'm not insulting the other countries at all. I'm just stating that the NFL is complex. There is probably no other sport in the world that is as complex as the NFL. You can have baseball purists argue about the complexity of baseball but I don't buy it.

You have to be a near genius to be an NFL coach now. Playbooks are thousands of pages and each play has different audibles for every position!

A tie in the NFL is unforgivable and it is also unforgivable in the USA!

Dazed Nostalgia

Yesterday I picked up the Criterion Collection's package of Dazed and Confused. Richard Linklater's breakthrough 1993 effort created American Graffiti for the 70's generation.

Linklater was one of the pioneers of the 90's Indie Film Movement along with my favorites workaholic Robert Rodriguez, dialogue master Kevin Smith, and motormouth Quentin Tarrantino.

Linklater is more subdued in his efforts, choosing to stay closer to the real indie feel. He really hasn't had a huge blockbuster Pulp Fiction style hit (besides School of Rock and Bad News Bears but it was a remake so therefore disqualified in my opinion) as his peers have.

His films are more likely to place you in an olympic sized pool of nostalgia. Whether it is a lost ill fated love, the high school experience, hanging out with your best friends, or just ranting about the world's ills and beauty, Linklater is your boy.

Dazed and Confused is a great romp through what it was like to be in high school in the 70's. A little backstory on myself. I was in elementary school in the 70's but my parents had taken into our home two high school aged brothers. They taught me about football, chess, and the Doobie Brothers. I would frequently go to the drive in with one of them and while he wanted to make out with his girlfriend he would have a couple of high school girls watch me in their car. That happened a few times and was great fun!

We would then go out afterwards and usually cruise and chase his friends around town or wind up at the arcade or a local food drive in to hang out. That was my high school 70's experience which is very close to Linklater's vision.

Just a bunch of kids hanging out with a soundtrack of the best bands that the 70's had to offer. So with Aerosmith and a orange GTO pulling into a parking lot, Dazed and Confused kicks off this trip into nostalgia.

There have been so many films that immortalize nearly every generation but there is something perfect about the portrayal of Linklater's 70's in Dazed and Confused for me. Something subtle but feels totally tangible.

Included with the Criterion Collection's set area great number of extras. You get your money's worth. Pick it up, enjoy it, experience it.

Back Online!!!!

The past day or so I was offline with my main high end PC.

I decided to test my RAM because it appeared that one stick might be bad due to funky behavior on the PC's part, turns out that I installed a program that didn't play well with XPx64.

I wound up reformatting. That is when I had problems configuring my SATARaid array. I have no experience with setting those up so I read about it and it still is not 100% but it is close!

I am in the process of putting back all of my settings and a few drivers that are essential to daily usage.

There is one Storm game tonight and the last one is tomorrow. Well except for the post season tournament which is next weekend I believe.

Next week I plan on building a green screen floor on pallets and plywood. That will give us some more room for filming since we will be able to shoot from further away. We would be able to key out the floor then instead of just the actual green screen. That allows for crane shots which are also in the works!!!!

Yeah a real professional studio my friends!!!! I wasn't kidding!!!!

Champs!!!!

The Storm are the Midwestern Division Champs after tonight's win!!!!

Not only that but we secured the top seed in the post season tournament and tied for the team's best record with three games to go!!!!

Little pleasures like this are what make the world go 'round!!!!

Wrestling On Scifi?!?!?!

I was very angry last night.

The Scifi Channel has decided to put ECW wrestling on their network!

Now this isn't a rant against wrestling. I was a huge wrestling fan until WWF bought out WCW and the quality of the product disappeared faster than a dozen donuts around Rosie O'Donnell.

The point of cable tv is having niche networks that appeal to everyone. Everyone has a few channels to watch that bring them that kind of entertainment.

Scifi HAS gone way downhill with showing the same movies every weekend now. They rarely invest anything into anykind of series outside of Ghost Hunters or similar shows. Ghost Hunters is pretty good and I enjoy it but one series does not a network make.

Their movies, well I'd jump all over the opportunity to direct one, but they aren't very good. I'd love to direct a low budget movie for the Scifi Channel. But this isn't about that. It is about taking a kind of show and putting it onto a network that has no business showing that kind of show!

You wouldn't expect to see Monster Trucks on Lifetime would you? NO! So keep wrestling off of the Scifi Network!!!!

Sheesh....

The Anti- Mr. Hyde

Our new supervisor is a gem of a guy.

He rarely comes around, asks what we have going on, and leaves us alone.

He knows every process, knows the routing of our parts, knows the people and gets along with everyone.

He is someone I respect and who I would go above and beyond for. Our jobs have become easier since Mr Hyde has gone to another position and he has started to wreak havoc there!

So if you have read my posts for any length of time you know how I complain about my job, well now I am also going to say something nice about one of the good guys who is now our supervisor just so you shall know that I can say something positive about my place of work as well.

Our new supervisor is sharp, nice, and talkative.
He isn't hyper, pushy, arrogant, or stupid.
He isn't someone who nearly provokes me to do violence unto his body.

He is one of the good guys and he has made our job better by actually leaving the people who do their jobs to do their jobs.

FINALLY!!!!

I received a "Thank You For Your Submission!" message after repeatedly submitting Hard Drive Cafe over and over again for the past two days!!!!

I thought for sure that it had gone through at least twice before but there was never a confirmation of submission. So I decided to side with caution and keep uploading it until I got the message.

I didn't want to let down everyone who worked on this little project so at all hours of the past two nights when I thought there would be little traffic I tried over and over again. Still no message.

So instead of giving up this afternoon I decided I was just going to do it over and over again until the deadline and it finally went and was verified!!!!

I'm thrilled my friends!!!!

The Demythification Of A Rockstar

I'll just state my point and then get into why.

Sebastian Bach is like the male Jessica Simpson.

He has an IQ of nearly any household cat and the energy level of a tsunami. In fact Jessica Simpson might have more going for her than Bach does. Sebastian Bach is so stuck in the eighties, not like I am but like someone who has no clue that it is actually 2006.

VH1's new celebreality show Supergroup is an exercise in taking people who you looked up to as ROCKSTARS and has showed them as normal everyday people who just have people around them tell them YES all the time.

Being a rockstar is something that should be shrouded in myth and mystery. I don't want to know what happens in their real lives. I want the rockstar on stage playing the music I love.

Sebastian Bach is a moron and this show shows him as he is. If he couldn't sing he would be homeless somewhere or quite possibly dead as someone would put him out of his misery of stupidness and helping the DNA pool by thinning the herd.

As much as I love Ted Nugent and what he usually stands for, I don't know how much Ted I could take in real life. He is the veteran of the group and probably the most solid. He knows music and he knows what sounds good.


Scott Ian is probably the most stable and normal guy. He is understated and just wants to get in there and rock. He knows what he can do and what he can't and plays to his strengths.

Evan Seinfeld is the bassist/pornstar/manager of his porn star wife Tera Patrick. He is a rock star to the extreme. He is full speed all the time and wants things loud and heavy. He is sort of the bully with the hot temper of the group and seems like he can handle Bach better than anyone else.

Jason Bonham is the son of the legendary John Bonham. The drummer of the group. Quite possibly the highest IQ of the group or at least he has the best British accent of the group so he sounds like the smartest.

Did I mention that Sebastian Bach is an idiot? Whatever happens to pop into his pea brain just comes right out of his mouth.

Yes Ozzy is a moron too. His show just really showed the dangers of drugs and alcohol abuse. It is amazing Ozzy hasn't killed himself in a freak microwave accident. But somehow he is still fairly lovable. Like a stupid dog who just wants to be petted and has to have attention.

Rockstars should be rockstars and not people.

Lock Obtained!!!!

Yeah it is a small step and pretty insignificant but it was important to me.

I loaded up John and Chris and we put our lock on our new studio at the airport!!!!
We all have the combination and we all have the same goals in mind!!!!

I can't tell you how cool it is to have two people who share the same passion for something and are on the same page as you are.

It is actually a huge step. I take back my first sentence. This means something to me and it means we are on our way to having something that is very special.

We have our own studio to create in.

We have our own studio to bring our dreams to life in.

We have our own studio to bring other people's visions to life.

We have our own studio!

Uploading Problems?

Well I thought I had uploaded the Hard Drive Cafe successfully but I never got a confirmation screen saying it was finished even though the uploading bar was full.

I dug a little deeper and a lot of people were complaining about the same thing. I am thinking it is a 99% chance that it is there but just in case I have uploaded it about twenty more times. In each case I received an error that says their disk space wasn't enough.

I know it isn't my disk space, I have nearly two hundred gigs free and it was only a six meg file.

We get to move into our hanger now!

My brother informed me that yesterday he had everything moved out with the exception of a stove and something else that I can't recall at the moment. Today we have to get a lock and get it out there on the hanger.

I should stop calling it a hanger, it is now a studio and a step into our future!

The Hard Drive Cafe Is Finished!!!!

I got up at a little after 6 a.m. this morning but I confess that I wanted to sleep longer.

My cats had different plans though and felt hungry then.

Anyway after my normal morning ritual I broke out the camera and plugged it into my PC for my very first editing project that didn't involve the training DVDs!

I finished it up just a little after 11 a.m.

It went very smooth and I feel I got the best out of the footage I shot!!!!
I do wish I had given the actors a little bit better material to match their performances after seeing it a few times this morning but for something that was shot in about an hour with less than three days of prep time, I am happy with it!

I have uploaded it to the contest but there wasn't any kind of confirmation at the end but I am sure it is there!

I have also uploaded it to You Tube, you can see it here

The Storm OWN the USBL now. We knocked off the Kansas Cagerz last night in a back and forth game. We were up by 9, down by 11, and wound up winning and it wasn't close!!!!

TODAY ROCKED!!!!

I couldn't have asked for a better group of people to have helped out on this project!

First of all, very short notice and little time to prepare.

Second of all, everyone pitched in 100% and were willing to do what I asked and go above and beyond!

Third, everyone had their lines cold and owned them!

Fourth, we pulled it off in record time!

Fifth, I wish I was able to have given them better material to work with but someday I'll be at a level of writing that I will be able to match the actors performance.

We started at just after 6 and were wrapped up by 7:10!!!!
The actors learned their lines in about 10 minutes and hit every mark without a flaw!!!!
It was a great experience and I'll begin editing tomorrow after work to get the 3-5 minutes!!!!

Not only that but I made the Storm game tonight as well! Since I haven't missed a game in nearly five years, it was just frosting on the cake that I could make it. I was only able to make it because of the actors and the great job they did!!!!

Yes the Storm did win tonight and put another full game on the Dodge City Legend!!!! Sun played about 3:30 again and seemed to be better. He didn't look like he was out of place but you can tell that he is really learning organized basketball.

He didn't look like he was in pain or gimpy like he did the previous game.

Yes today was a great day my friends!!!! Well it wasn't good for everyone, it seems that Iraq's most wanted terrorist ran afoul with two of our F-16's.

Today IS The Day

I plan on taking off of work at noon today to do final prep on the set. If my producer comes through with the girl he was contacting then I'll shoot her scenes and she can leave.

I need to make a lightsaber and arrange the office of a ISP into a Internet Cafe.
Then go over the cam set ups.

Not bad but the alternative is.....36 years until retirement.......

It Is Coming Together

The short notice short project is coming together.

I believe I have the required actors now!

I have the place and the time reserved!

Everything is actually moving along smoothly, well in a relative sense that is.

I am excited!

It Could Happen

Or it could fall apart just as quickly.

I have no actors yet that are committed to being in the short however I do have a location and a ton of monitors to use!

If I had just known about it a week earlier I am positive that I could have pulled this off and even had time for a rehearsal.

Seven days, well now six just isn't enough for what I have in mind even though it isn't that complex.

Keep sending me good thoughts and it could wind up happening!!!!

The Omen: Another Stupid Unnecessary Remake

I won't see this movie.

I will not see a remake based upon a previously made movie from a horror franchise or a TV show!

Those of you who are regular readers know my position on this. If you see a remake it will just encourage them to make more.

No it isn't because of the 06/06/06 date thing either. I do not discuss politics or religion on this blog although I do love discussing both in person if the situation is right. However I will make this one exception on the number 666 because of the marketing strategy that is being employed for the opening of what is likely a horrible remake.

I lean towards preterism with regards to eschatology. I believe that most of Revelations was discussing the current events of that time and culminated in the destruction of Jerusalem by Rome. Who was the 666 Beast? A good candidate would be Nero but there were likely a couple more that could have fit the description. A little research will give you a ton of information on it.

I don't think that there will soon be a end time. The actual end times were the end of the Jewish sacrifical system and the destruction of the temple. Dispensationalism is a relatively new concept, created in the 1800's. It includes Amillennialism, Premillennialism, and Postmillennialism.

Now these are very seductive doctrines since they deal with all kinds of destruction, the Four Horsemen, and general mayhem but I just don't think that is in our future. I'm not dogmatic about it and wouldn't argue much against it but I really don't think it will happen, I really think it already did.

There are ministries based completely around the end of the world and they make a fortune from interpreting today's headlines and putting it in the context of Revelations, with a causal twist from Nostradamus.

I think there is probably war, peace, hard times, and incredible times ahead for the Earth and us as a whole.

Sorry for this slight diversion from the usual conversation on Filmmaking, Poker, Fantasy Football, and other assorted thoughts that go through my little head but since it is my blog it is my rules:)

I also wish I had known about the FX Network's contest about a five minute pilot a week earlier. There are only seven days left at this point and I found out about it yesterday. I have been thinking in overdrive to try to put together a five minute scene from the Hard Drive Cafe script.

I am now not sure that I can even though yesterday I thought I could pull it off. The problem is the location and finding enough monitors to look like an internet cafe. I think I could cobble together four actors to do four minutes of loose dialogue but to put it in a setting that looks believeable? Not likely but I am going to Intercorp today to see what I can work out as far as location and monitors.

I am going to give it a shot. To get it in on time we would probably have to shoot tomorrow night and I haven't even talked to any actors yet.

Yeah I know, I can say longshot too.

Gas Vs. Charcoal

It is an age old debate in America. Do you use a gas grill or a charcoal grill for cooking?

There are advantages and disadvantages to both.

With charcoal you have better smokey flavor and more of an All American grilling experience....well and you haven't lived until you have charcoaled corn on the cob!!!!
What you also have is unpredictable temperatures, in the wind you can have lighting problems, a longer time until you can cook while waiting on the coals, and the clean up process.

With gas you have easy lighting, precise temperature control, and little clean up.
The downside is that it is extremely difficult to smoke anything, flavor, and you really don't get the thrill of playing with fire.

If you have the fundage I'd say get one of each for whatever mood you are in. If you are teaching your friends or children to grill, get a charcoal grill. Once they master that a gas grill is a snap.

Personally I use gas now but every once in a while I get a urge to use charcoal!!!!
There really isn't a wrong choice here. A grill is something that you just have to measure to your own personal situation. If you are in a small apartment and have no yard then you need a small gas grill. If you are in a house then you can go as large as you want and use either.

If you love the taste of smoke then you will probably want a smoker grill which has an offset firebox. You can then use wood for the perfect flavor. Yeah I know that you can smoke on a gas grill but believe me, it really isn't the same. When you use wood to cook, well it really doesn't get much more outdoorsy and primal than that unless your meal was just walking somewhere and you killed and prepared itl!!!!

If you are just thinking about which one to use then you are missing out on the real purpose of grilling which is to do it for others and share in the thrill of good food with friends!!!!

Best Record In The USBL And Stuff!!!!

The Storm now own the best record in the USBL after last nights win over the Cagerz!

It was a good game for about three quarters and then we cracked the game open and it turned into an easy victory!

It is now Sunday morning and my cats woke me up. Crying for food at my bedroom door does that.
They wake me up and then they sleep most of the day. I can't even sleep in until 7....sheesh....

Now in Soprano's News, No Spoilers so you can keep reading.

Anyway I believe the Soprano's ends tonight. Now that the gay mobster storyline is over with maybe the show will pick back up? I doubt it. There have been maybe four good shows out of this season, the rest weren't up to snuff. This show is just over with.

Yeah there is a part 2 of this season in January but is it going to help? We won't know until it happens. I am not holding my breath.

Deadwood season 3 starts next week I believe! Now that show is still one of the best on TV!!!!
Never seen it? Well Deadwood really isn't for the faint of heart. It is profane, graphic, and bloody. Was it what the real old west was like?

Who knows. Maybe so, maybe not but the show is good!

What are the other best shows on TV? Wow, what a question. Anyone who knows me knows that I can't name a favorite movie. There are too many that are great to name just one as my favorite.

TV shows are like that for me as well. So best TV shows on the air now?

Let's see, The Shield, Veronica Mars, Deadwood, Lost, My Name Is Earl, Rescue Me, Desperate Housewives, 24, and some of the Adult Swim shows. That about sums it up for fictional shows. No, the Soprano's just don't make the list anymore.

However we live in the age of cable TV so there is more!!!!

Surreal Life, MYTHBUSTERS (especially with Kari Byron, hope she never does Playboy, it'd just ruin it for me) Ghost Hunters, and a lot of the History Channel's documentaries. Love 'em!
I'm sure I am forgetting a couple of shows but if I remember one or two I'll post them.

Southland Tales And Weird Movies

Southland Tales is the sophomore effort from Richard Kelly of Donnie Darko fame. It seems a hybrid of genres and since Kelly wrote it there will be many many storylines to keep track of.

After reading about this project for a while I have to say that I'm excited to see it, if only to see Sarah Michelle Gellar play an adult film star! Southland is hard to describe what it is about and if it is like Donnie Darko it might take a few viewings to figure out your version of what it is about, so I really can't tell you what it is about....yet. You'll have to read that for yourself.

Southland is supposed to have three graphic novels as the first three chapters of the story with the movie being the final three chapters. Now when this is going to be released is anyone's guess.

What I want to talk about are movies like this in which are very out of the box. Primer, Northfork, or Memento for instance. Movies that are open to interpretation of the viewer. These movies are just flat out fun to watch! I do like movies that I ask myself, "What did I just see?!" Which I found myself asking um....myself....I guess, after watching Donnie Darko and Primer. I had a better grasp on Memento after a couple of viewings.

Movies like this inspire me as a filmmaker because they seem to expand what is possible in my own little confined world.

I really struggle between stories in my head that are simple like "The Straight Story" which in my very humble opinion is an example of the perfect modern movie and movies like Eraserhead which is so far out there that you really don't know what happened.

I don't think there is a balance point there. I don't think you can combine a storyline that is straight forward with a narrative that is odd or bizarre and do it in a way that is filmmable. Yes you can do it in a comic where pencil, ink, and text are your mediums. Film? Maybe but to be able to tell a story within a couple of hours???? You would have your work cut out for you for sure!

I'm not saying that it hasn't been done or even done well, just that it is a difficult task and it isn't done often. There are plenty of modern Asian films out now that combine these elements such as Oldboy, Ringu, and a few dozen others. American filmmakers just don't go out of their way to make a movie that leaves the viewers guessing at what they saw. We generally like our movies in a narrative package that wraps everything up in the end.

Nothing wrong with that at all. It is just that sometimes a mood comes over me and I want something I haven't seen before in a way that I haven't seen it done before!

We Knocked Off Dodge City!!!!

Yeppers!

We whipped Dodge tonight in a very close game but we won by 2 in the closing seconds!!!!

We also got to see Sun Ming Ming play nearly four minutes. He had one point off of a free throw. I swear Dodge just don't use the guy right. When he was on the court they didn't even look his way, even when he was right under the basket and couldn't miss.

If he ever develops he will be unstoppable.

So there I was parking. I see Bub's jeep in the parking lot, cockeyed in a parking space. I knew right then Bub had been tipping a few before game time. Well I did too but at supper at Callahan's. I knew that Bub had probably been at it since he clocked out. So he is slurring and staggering a little and I elbow Picky Eater who sits next to me and tell him loud enough for Bub to hear me about how Bub had parked his jeep.

Bub responds that he had a rough day and laughs, then drinks his dollar beer. It is Thirsty Thursday so beer and hot dogs are a buck a piece.

By the fourth quarter Bub is snoozing. Yep, he is sleeping away and nearly slides out of his seat. I elbow Picky Eater again so he can get a good laugh, he does and Bub wakes up.

A good time was had by all!

I Left At Halftime

Last night at the Storm game I left at halftime. I developed a headache about midway through warmups and it just didn't want to go away.

Kind of a bad night for me. I just came home about 8:30 took two Excedrin and headed off to bed.

Wow, the excitement of it all.

I feel great this morning though! Dodge City is tonight which means another game with Sun Ming Ming.

It is raining a little bit outside right now, I just checked the radar and it might rain for most of this morning. Fine by me, it cools things off and it feels pretty nice out.

I can't believe today is June. Sheesh.
When I was a kid it took forever for a day to be over with and for a month to end. Now it flies by. I am more positive now than ever that as you age time accelerates. I was told when I was a teen that I would wake up one day and be 30.

I really understand that now.