Kerry gave his speech, the balloons dropped, and the conventioneers poured out of the Fleet Center into the streets of Boston for one more night of drunken handshaking before having to get back on with their regular lives. I thought it was a pretty good speech, a bit stiff toward the beginning, but he hit the Bushies where it hurt and the crowd loved it. As excited as I am about the thought that we'll hopefully be sending Bush and his raving pack of neocon corporate criminals packing in just a few months, and while I know that on many issues a Kerry administration would be a vast improvemement, Naomi Klein reminds us about how many issues they are the same on and encourages the left not to stop fighting.

Will Ferrell RULES! Just watch the video.

Washington Interns Gone Bad is finally taking off here in San Francisco. Besides getting into the first of what will be several independent video stores, there will be a partial screening at the Rough Cut Film Festival on Saturday, August 14th at Artists' Television Access, 992 Valencia St, 8:00PM. It will be screened along with some unfinished films, trailers, raw footage and a range of materials. I'll be on hand for the Q&A session with a batch of DVDs to sell. Mark your calendars, San Franciscans. Washington Interns Gone Bad is definitely best seen on a big screen with a big audience.

Talk on a cellphone in the movies: get maced!

More convention blogging: this is an updating page of convention posts from the fine folks at Blogger, via monkeyfilter. Also, WOnkette is there and always worth reading.

Next weekend I'm going to a wedding, not as a guest, but for the first time as an official wedding videographer. I have a tough act to follow though, as this couple have already gotten married on a reality show (scroll to the bottom). I don't have to edit this or anything. The groom knows how to edit, so he's going to do it himself. If this works out well, I'll have to try doing it more often to suppliment the old income.

I haven't been paying too much attention to the democratic convention. As far as I'm concerned, John Kerry would have to commit a terrorist act himself in order to lose my vote, so whatever anybody says at this convention is irrelevant to me. I got to attend the last convention as a staffer. Some of the parties I got to go to were fun, but for the most part, my experience there helped cement my distaste for the lesser of two evils party. But, much more interesting than the coverage of the speakers' podium are the stories of people who are actually attending. And thanks to good old blogging technology, people are telling those stories and getting them out much quicker. The DNC even gave press credentials to some bloggers this year. Even my old DNC boss there has a blog, though he rarely has time to post anything, let alone any juicy inside stuff. I'll post links to convention bloggers as I find them. For now, Exit Stage Left has some guest posters who are there and telling interesting personal accounts. See also my video (22mb realvideo) from the 2000 convention and protests, featuring Rage Against the Machine.

San Franciscans, rejoice... you can finally rent Washington Interns Gone Bad. Once I've printed up some new box art, Into Video at 1439 Haight Street (between Masonic and Ashbury) will be carrying my film.

Farai Chideya is convention blogging. She's covering the Democratic convention in Boston for a variety of places and blogging about it all from a wireless PDA.

George Bush and Tony Blair visit a gay bar? Do not be confused by the domain of that site. rathergood.co.uk is not the same as rathergood.com.

whatWhatWHAT???

Donnie Darko demystified. Salon tries to explain what exactly Donnie Darko is all about ahead of the theatrical release of a new director's cut.

Salon has a great interview with the best comic book writer ever, Alan Moore. If you've never read Watchmen, V for Vendetta or From Hell, go read them now! There is also an excellent documentary about him called The Mindscape of Alan Moore which I highly recommend if you can find it anywhere. I caught it at a film festival but I'm not sure if it's been distributed.

Most. Addictive. Flash Game. Ever. Defend your castle from the stick figure hoards. (via monkeyfilter)

Speaking of exagerated stories, the whole Linda Ronstadt incident that has been in the news was not quite the crazy fracas that was reported.

You may have read an article recently called Terror in the Skies, Again? It's been all over the blogosphere the last few days. A woman gets on a plane with 14 middle eastern men who act "suspiciously" and she jumps to the conclusion that they were making a practice run of putting a bomb together in flight. Scary? Sure. If only it were true. Turns out she was freaked by a troupe of Syrian musicians. I shouldn't have known better than to believe a word this woman said after seeing her quote Ann Coulter without the slightest bit of sarcasm.

Protest Warrior: Some right wing counterprotestors pick up video cameras and the result comes out slightly less entertaining and greatly less mature than Jackass. According to these guys, the left hates freedom or something. Watch them try to look impressive with their crowds of tens of people. Watch them try to interview lefties only to be told to take a flying leap. Listen to them whine about it. Someday, these guys could get a job at Fox News.

What do Sharon Osbourne, Rick Rubin, Brian Becker (of Clear Channel Entertainment, Justin Hawkins (from The Darkness) and Satan all have in common? They're all in the top 5 list of most important people in rock in Kerrang magazine.

This is a great parody of your typical ignorant Bush fan site.

Best videogame ever: Headkicker II

Ladies and Gentlemen, this is my one thousandth post to this blog! I started this blog on Wednesday, April 10, 2002, 9:45am. I started it for the sole purpose of keeping a production diary for the shoot and postproduction of my first film, Washington Interns Gone Bad. So it is only fitting that I use this milestone post to announce that my second film is officially in pre-production. I'm on my way to the first script meeting tonight. It's the first time I've colaborated on a screenplay and I'm doing it with some very cool and creative folks with whom I've worked on a couple of 48 Hours Film Projects. At this point in the production, all I can say is that it's going to be a short, it's going to be both scary and funny, it's going to be far less overtly political than Interns, and it's going to be much better planned out by people much more experienced than I was when I decided to pick up my camcorder and make a silly political comedy 2 years ago. I will keep folks updated on the progress and as we get closer to being completed, I'll post more details of what this film is about.

Well, every other blog has a link to this, so I figure I should jump on the bandwagon too. Better late than never. (warning: cheesy audio and silly animation)

Fox strikes back at Outfoxed.

Update on the B.A.D. Day 7 trial in DC: NOT GUILTY!!!

Funniest. Personal Ad. Ever. (via sarcasmo)

2004 is the year of the documentary. I've seen some great ones like Supersize Me and Fahrenheit 9/11, and there are some that I still really want to see, like Control Room, The Corporation, and Metallica: Some Kind of Monster. But this one not only has extremely important and timely subject matter, but one of the coolest distribution methods I've ever seen.

Noam Chomsky endorses Kerry. "He describes the choice facing US voters in November as "the choice between two factions of the business party". But the Bush administration was so "cruel and savage", it was important to replace it." Hey Dr. C, think you could call your friend Ralph and get him onto the same page?

How many people have been saying that Bush will try to use terrorism as an excuse to keep himself in office? We're not sounding so paranoid now, are we?

OK folks, this is the post you've all been waiting for. I've come to the very end of Those 70's Recipes and as promised, I have saved the best (worst) for last. Here it is. Enjoy!

Rupert Murdoch: media mogul, propagandist, dumbass. I think Chuck D put it the best: Here's a letter to the New York Post The worst piece of paper on the east coast Matter of fact the whole state's forty cents in New York City fifty cents elsewhere It makes no goddamn sense at all America's oldest continuously published daily piece of bullshit

Guess who is blogging now? Would you believe Michael Powell, son of Colin Powell and chairman of the FCC? He has comments enabled and already people are dogging him about relaxing media ownership rules which allow Clear Channel to buy up every last radio station and for targettig Howard Stern for selective enforcement of indecency. Go get him!!! I guarantee the entire network his blog is on will crash the second Howard mentions it Monday morning.

Hey George, who do you think is dumb enough to fall for this?

It sickens me to read about this kind of thing happening in America.

As you may or may not know, some right wing asshat made a movie called Michael Moore Hates America to lamely counter Fahrenheit 9/11. Apperently, they had a little fun at his expense on the Daily Show last night. Check it out.

I've always loved a good courtroom drama. When I was a kid, I used to watch all the syndicated courtroom shows after school. Probably watching Divorce Court while my folks were having their divorce wasn't the best idea, but that's not the point and could be its own story at another time. When I was 19, I got arrested for an open container and underage drinking at a block party in Cortland, NY. Having seen all of these shows I figured that I could represent myself. Of course, I was a nervous wreck and I wound up getting fined $100 anyway. I have some friends in DC who got arrested for trying to lobby Dennis Hastert for voting rights and budget autonomy for the district. They are representing themselves in their case, and we are awaiting the verdict. My friends in DC never fail to amaze and impress me. Read all about the trial on Zoe's blog.

The Pet Goat is a story in this text book that George Bush read to schoolchildren for 7 minutes after hearing that the 2nd tower was hit. Read the stunning customer reviews!

This is a beautiful thing to behold... I don't ordinarily support police brutality, but couldn't the cops have gone just a little bit Rodney King on this guy? People have gotten seriously beaten for much pettier offenses than Kenny Boy's bilking of California, Oregon, his shareholders, his retires and his employees. I think if anyone deserves a nightstick to the head or a plunger where the sun don't shine, it's this guy.

Bush is getting so desperate to raise his ratings that he's now pressuring Pakistan to get him bin Laden or other most wanted terrorists in time for the election. "According to one source in Pakistan's powerful Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), 'The Pakistani government is really desperate and wants to flush out bin Laden and his associates after the latest pressures from the U.S. administration to deliver before the [upcoming] U.S. elections.'"

Kenny Boy has finally been indicted! We don't know exactly what his charges are because if you're good enough friends with Bush, you get a sealed indictment. As much as I want to see that man spend the rest of his life someplace like San Quentin, I know that it's much more likely that he'll be golfing at some Club Fed if he gets convicted. So that's why I hope that a deal is cut for him to nail Cheney to the wall. But in the short term, all I really hope for is that his trial gets lots of coverage during the republican 9/11 exploitation party convention.

REMINDER: This Sunday, 7/11, 7:00 PM - Washington Interns Gone Bad is playing on the big screen at the Funnybone Comedy CLub in Pittsburgh, PA. Details are here. You can download a flyer here. There will be members of the cast and crew in attendence and DVDs will be available for sale at a discount. Don't miss it. This film is best seen on a large screen in a full room.

Lucky Iraqis! Their new government is already giving them American-style freedom by passing their version of the USA Patriot Act. Let the eagle soar...

I recently lamented about the dearth of rocking in my life, and tonight while listening very loudly to Franz Ferdinand in the car, I was flooded with some of my favorite moments playing in bands. While I had great times playing basement gigs in College Park with Dirtpatch and interesting musical explorations in New Paltz with Fnord, definitely my most memorable gigs were with Captain Paradox. There was the time that we played a party at this swanky house that belonged to some retired ambassador. Somebody we knew had a friend who was house sitting and we set up in the den and rocked the house. Anne was visiting from NY that weekend and it was her birthday at midnight. That was also the night that Adam first met Sarah and later asked me to give him her number. They're married now, and it was only fitting that we played a short set at their wedding. A retired ambassador, as you can imagine, has some very high end booze in his bar. That's the only time I've ever drank grappa. Mmmmmmm grappa! Another time was at an art gallery which was closing the following day. The building was being torn down to make way for condos so people were encouraged to trash the place. We were between drummers at that point, so Adam and I played acoustic while there were dj's in other rooms. I kicked holes in the wall while playing a song called Earthquake. And speaking of acoustic sets, there was the time we were playing at Jaxx (the bar where hairmetal bands go to die) between two metal bands and Rob was stuck in Vegas with a family emergency, so we played an acoustic set. While it stuck out like a sore thumb between two metal bands, the metal guys were quite supportive. Another time we followed a freestyle hiphop and poetry jam at the Kaffa House and really connected to a very different audience than we usually played to. On our second to last gig we followed an urban youth interpretive dance troupe. A fire alarm that went off during the first song of our very last show. There was the attempt at playing with a horn section. There was the gig with the identical twin teenage girls singing perfectly harmonized backup. There were so many open mic nights. I miss it.