It's Moviemaking Time!

It's been over 2 years since I've made a film. Starting a family doesn't leave much room for filmmaking, even when it's a 1 to 5 minute short. That's not to say I haven't been spending that time shooting and editing adorable videos of my daughter. My friends and family love these home movies and I love making them, but it's not the same as doing narrative filmmaking. I jumped into filmmaking head first 5 years ago by writing, directing and editing a feature length political comedy of the same name as this blog (you can watch it from the links in the left column). After moving from Washington, DC to San Francisco I joined the crew for two 48 Hour Film Projects. I also did a couple of shorts of my own. So when I saw that there was going to be a Cinemasports event as part of this year's Mill Valley Film Festival, I jumped at the chance to put together a team. Cinemasports is similar to the 48 Hour Film Project, only instead of 48 hours to make a short film, you get 10 hours. I've always found that limitations and challenges are great for forcing out creativity, so I have a good feeling about this. They call it The Iron Chef of Filmmaking as they choose "ingredients" that each film has to have, whether it be a character, bit of dialog, plotline, etc. Then each team has 10 hours to write, shoot, edit, and turn in a complete short under 4 min in length. At the 11th hour is the screening. What makes this one extra special is that it's part of the Mill Valley Film Festival. Anybody in the business who calls Northern California home will probably be there, so there's a chance that George Lucas, various members of the Copolla family, Sean Penn and others could be in the house that night. I really can't wait to do this. I have put together a talented cast and crew and I think we have the potential to make something really special. Now for your viewing pleasure, here are my last two shorts. First is A Guy Walks Into a Bar which I put together as an entry to the Radio Alice 3 Minute Film Festival. It didn't make it in that festival, but it played in the Zeitgeist International Film Festival a few months later and has screened in a few other short fests since. Next is a little one minute piece that I did for a now-defunct website: I will be sure to post the short that we do for Cinemasports here, even if it sucks (which it won't).

Random Tidbits

I'm way too scattered to write a whole post on one thing, so here are some random things that have been happening. Last night I went to take the garbage out and my neighbors warned me that there was a deer in the parking lot back by the dumpster. Where I live isn't that urban, but it's not that rural either and this guy was pretty far into a residential area. I looked and listened before determining that this animal wasn't around and it was safe to take out the trash, but as I closed the dumpster I heard hooves on pavement and this fairly large (probably an 8 point rack) buck stumbles out from between a couple of cars and runs across the parking lot toward the bushes that go alongside our apartments. I yell to my neighbors who are all on their patios that he's heading their way and then he turned around and bounded out of our driveway. Thinking back on it, it was incredibly dangerous of me to put myself in the proximity of a scared and cornered beast with sharp pointy antlers, but luckily nobody got hurt. And on a completely different subject, Obi Wan Kenobi said it best: "I felt a great disturbance in the Force, as if millions of voices suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced. I fear something terrible has happened." The millions of voices silenced were all of the people who were downloading from Demonoid.com, the second biggest Bit Torrent tracker site of them all. There are conflicting reports of what happened. One story is that they're recovering from a crash of some sort. The other is that the Canadian version of the RIAA shut them down. Either way, I'm two weeks into a download that has all of a sudden stopped working and it's a tad frustrating to say the least. Lastly, I found out that a friend of mine is throwing a film festival in a few months and I have an open invite to show something. I need to come up with a short comedy and I am not only having writer's block, but idea block. I'm drawing a complete blank. I need to find some comedic inspiration soon.

Who Needs Some General to Betray Us When We've Got a Congress Like This?

To the esteemed and honorable members of the United States House of Representatives, I would like to give you all a prize. Please line up at my door so that one at a time you can personally accept a backhand pimp slap from me! Today was a great day for you, wasn't it? You couldn't get enough votes to keep my daughter's affordable health care plan safe from Bush's veto pen, but you sure can muster enough votes to condemn a newspaper ad from weeks ago. When you people took that oath to uphold the constitution, did you conveniently forget about that part right up front about freedom of speech and of the press? Thank you so much for acting so swiftly to keep us safe from the words of a non-profit organization while millions of children, my daughter included, can lose their affordable health coverage. You've sure got your priorities in order. All sarcasm aside, why are we as citizens allowing this to happen? We work hard and it's our tax dollars that pay these people's salaries. They work for us, and they are wasting OUR time and OUR money about words in a newspaper. Free speech is not a partisan issue, despite the attempts of certain bloggers (I'm not going to call you out but you know who you are) who attempt to paint it as such. This is something our nation was founded upon and is something worth fighting for. Rather than the masturbatory partisan finger wagging going on at some blogs, we need to hold both of these worthless excuses for political parties' feet to the fire on this. As for the issue of affordable health insurance for our children, it's not too late to put the pressure on your reps as this will most likely be coming back to them soon. Please see this post for some helpful and easy links.

It's Time for Action

OK, it's time to get something done. In just 7 days, my precious daughter Stella and millions of other children could lose their access to affordable health care. Bush has already promised to veto the renewal of the program that allows a struggling working family like mine to be able to afford to take care of our children's health, and as a lame duck he's got nothing to lose by taking health care away from children. The congressional republicans can go either way on this. On one hand, they don't want to go into an election as the people who just took away health care from children, but on the other, they could take the health care away from children and blame it on the democrats. So we need to put the pressure on, and we need to do it NOW. Here are two things you can do to help: Write a letter to the editor of your local paper about this. Regardless of what you might think of MoveOn.org in the wake of their NYT ad, they make it easier for you to write a letter and my daughter's health is at stake here. Get in touch with your representatives here. I live in the Bay Area and my representatives have my back on this issue. Anybody who is reading this in a red state or a red district of a blue state, or in a blue state with a purple representative or... you get the idea... please take just a few minutes to help. Do it for her:

If You Don't Like Free Speech, Just Shut Up!

It seems like the theme of the news this week has been around what people are saying. The week began with our entire government going nuts over a newspaper ad, and it's ending with a massive freakout from all sides over a speaker at a university. And while our nation has our collective panties in one huge bunch over words, people continue to die on a daily basis in Iraq, millions of Americans continue not to have access to affordable health care, and religious extremists all over the world continue to make the lives of anybody who doesn't buy their brand of mythology as miserable as they can. So what's with the obsession with words while there are so many actions that are being ignored? I've already said pretty much all there is to say about the MoveOn ad and the surrounding wave of asshattery. Now I'd like to address the insanity surrounding the crazy Iranian dude. President Practically Unpronounceable Guy of Iran is going to speak at Columbia University. Is the guy crazy? Yes. Is he evil? Probably. Does he run a decent government? Hell no! Does he want to kill a whole bunch of people? You betcha. Should Americans be exposed to just how crazy this guy is first hand, or are we supposed to just take the word of our government which has some major credibility issues when it comes to foreign policy? Well that seems to be the question. And in a country founded upon the concept of free speech, that shouldn't be a question at all. The opponents of this speech trotting out a number of names of rather socially unacceptable people and asking if they too should be given the opportunity to speak. The very fact that they ask these questions shows a great deal of arrogance on their part. It says to the rest of us that we are too stupid to make up our own minds about these people. The other thing is that this gives a theocratic authoritarian prick a first hand taste of the sort of freedom that he's never seen before. In his country he can spew whatever brand of crazy he wants to without ever having to be called on it. Is that going to happen in New York City? I believe Axl Rose put it best: "You know where you are? You're in the jungle baby. You're gonna DIE!!!!" I think it's about time that these obnoxious pundits all just shut their arrogant mouths for once and have a little bit of faith in New Yorkers to do what they do best. They're going to listen to what this jerkoff has to say and then tear him a new one. This is yet another example of where America could learn a lesson from Howard Stern. He lets all sorts of the dregs of society have a voice on his show, from a Klansman to Fred Phelps' family to Stephen Baldwin, and he lets his listeners decide for themselves if these people deserve praise or obnoxious and embarrassing phone calls. And 9 times out of 10 the listeners get it right.

What Happens in the White House Stays in the White House

Remember back when civil libertarians were having some serious problems with the assaults on our civil liberties by things like the PATRIOT Act and the domestic spying programs? The standard response from the right was that "the only people who have anything to worry about are those who have something to hide." So by that logic, what does the Neocon Cabal have to hide by refusing to open the papers of this current White House? Now as the Senate is getting ready to overturn Bush's 2001 executive order allowing ex-presidents to seal their records indefinitely, one anonymous republican Senator is putting a hold on it [via freakgirl]. First of all, what country is this? Since when can one Senator in the minority party put a hold on anything? And since when can this be done secretly? Secondly, why do I get the feeling that the secret republican Senator is Joe Lieberman?

They Tried to Make her go to Rehab...

Oh Britney you freakin' trainwreck! I understand how being thrust into the limelight at a young age as a hyper-sexualized teen popstar can do a number on a person. I'm sure that constant touring and recording and autograph signing while normal people your age were going to school didn't help things. I understand how your crazy life might lead to substance abuse. It's easy to numb the pain of watching every action of your life being pulled apart and analyzed so the sleazy gossip hounds can sell more advertising. But you're a mom now and it's really time to get your life together already. Do you want to be like Courtney Love, extending your long expired spot in the limelight with laughably bad performances, constant court appearances and showing up trashed on Comedy Central roasts and late night talk shows? You need to put on a pair of panties and get into a drug rehabilitation program with the quickness, before your ex husband Cletus gets sole custody of those kids! Check out the Watershed as a viable and affordable solution. DISCLOSURE: This post is sponsored by The Watershed

It's Official: The Senate Have Lost their Minds

Today I have completely and entirely lost the last tiny shred of faith I might have had in my government. We are in the middle of a war that we have no business being in. The lives of our troops are being pissed away because George Bush lied to the world. And when it comes down to it, rather than doing a damn thing about bringing our troops home or even giving these overworked troops a break between their tours in Iraq, our wonderful Senate acts swiftly to pass legislation officially condemning a newspaper ad. What the fuck, people?!?!?!?! There's so much I can say about just how angry this makes me, but what's the point anymore? This country is screwed. Bush broke it and all the king's horses and all the king's men don't give a rat's ass to even try fixing it. Why do I even bother voting or signing petitions or blogging about this when our government and the mass media are being played like a fiddle by the neoconservative noise machine? I give up. The bad guys won.

So Much to Do, So Little Time

There are lots of things I'd really like to be commenting on if only I had the time. Some college kid got tazered by the cops at a John Kerry Q&A. The ACLU is defending Larry Craig. There's the polygamist trial happening in Utah just in time to feed my polygamy fix while waiting for another season of Big Love (is it a coincidence that the character of Albee Grant looks quite a bit like Warren Jeffs?). And OJ freakin' Simpson is in trouble again! But I don't have time to make snarky comments about any of this stuff because I'm up to my eyeballs catching up with work (my workplace falls to pieces when I'm not there) and trying to convert my vast blog empire over to WordPress (I'm starting with Stella's Blog and not having a terrifically easy time with it so far.). I've also got a ton of pictures and video from our vacation that I ought to be posting, though I'm contemplating holding off on that until I can get the blogs converted. And as if that isn't enough, I'm trying to set up a webcam so my mom can see her granddaughter more often and everything seems to be working except for the sound.

I'm Back and Exhausted!

I'm finally back in California. We had a great trip to NY but the travel is exhausting. Stella was rather difficult on the return flight. As soon as we took off, she made the biggest poop ever, and we had to wait for a while until they turned off the seatbelt light before we could do anything about it. She also didn't want to sleep or sit in her seat at all. People hated us on that flight, but it's not like we'll ever see them again. But I've been on the other side of loud unhappy babies on planes before, so I feel their pain. I'll be back to regular posting soon. It's going to take me a while to play catch up.

The Jetsons is Reality

OK, so we still don't quite have flying cars that fold into a briefcase or sassy robot maids, but I always thought that the coolest thing the Jetsons had were the video phones. Sure, they've had computer videoconferencing for years now, and even those satellite video phones that they use on the news. But everyday people don't always want to hook up a little camera to their computer and put on a dorky looking headset so they don't echo. Voice over IP phone service has been getting better over the last few years as well. And now these technologies are finally catching up to the point where this kind of hardware with affordable high quality service is being offered to everyday consumers like me. Packet8 is one company that has combined affordable videophone technology with affordable high quality VoIP service that will get you all hooked up and ready for video chat. Of course, like any advance in technology, the potential for this to be used for the purpose of titillation just goes without saying. It would be great for business to let people see the kind of people with whom they are making deals. But for me, I would think that the biggest and most important application for this would be for far away family members to see each other while talking. Packet8 has 2 different video phones. One is a very feature-rich desk phone which would be cool for me except that as the father of a toddler who all of my relatives would want to see, it's not that easy to keep her in one place. That's why I would want to get the Packet8 Tango. It's a plug and play handheld Video Phone! Just look at this thing: It slices, it dices! Actually, it doesn't do either, but it lets you talk and watch at the same time. I could go into the rest of the features, but that's really the only feature that matters, isn't it? The plans are cheaper than most regular phone services with unlimited calling and long distance, with video. I'm all over this.

Reports from the Vacation Front

So far our trip to NY is great. Stella has been incredibly well behaved, even on the plane. She only cried maybe twice and slept through half of the flight. And my mom went a little bit nuts with getting some things for her to play with while she's here. Of course there are a couple of swings in the backyard tree, a little plastic slide, a kiddie pool and lots of stuffed animals, but the 9'x12' carnival jumpy house is an incredible indulgence! It's going to be hard for her to leave this funhouse for our boring by comparison apartment.

Out with the old...

So today I was trying to post something silly and blogger wouldn't publish to my server. So I went to complain for like the millionth time to my cheesy web host. When I log into my control panel, there is no functionality and a notice that my hosting is suspended until I pay for another year of hosting. This is the first I am hearing of this from them. No email warning me that I have a week to pay before my hosting gets suspended. So I submit a very sarcastic trouble ticket telling them how nice it would have been to have gotten a little heads up. They replied basically saying that I'd be un-suspended once I paid. I told them not to bother and I signed on with a newer and better host. The timing of this could not have been worse. Tomorrow we fly to New York for my cousin's wedding. I've got to be packing instead of trying to migrate my entire website to a new server. I did everything I could from my office which was basically just changing my DNS settings and creating a few directories. Once home, I set up the migration in Dreamweaver and hit the upload button right before taking Stella for our daily after-work playground excursion (she met a pair of brothers who just moved to town and even got into a toy lightsaber battle with one of them - the force is strong with this one! She also saw 3 month old twins, pointed and said "baby.") It was still uploading when I got home. Then I had to change my publishing settings in blogger and republish all 4 blogs. That took a long time, mostly on this blog with 5 years worth of posts. I think I may have lost some images that I uploaded through blogger in the last 6 months, but that's probably the only real glitch. It was all rather painless. So with this new hosting package, I'm going to be able to do a lot of neat stuff. The first thing is going to be an attempt to convert all of the blogs over to Word Press. I'm very excited about that, though a whole new blogging system is going to be a lot to get used to. I'm also going to re-launch my wedding videography site with some cool new features as I gear up to get some wedding gigs. I now have a lot more space, bandwidth and new technologies available to play with. I probably won't be blogging much from NY, so don't expect regular postings to resume until after the 17th. Just off the heels of another trip home for my grandmother's funeral, this will be a much happier affair. It's our first attempt at taking Stella on an airplane, and for many members of my family this will be their first time meeting her. It will also be my first wedding shoot with DVX. If I do it right then I get good demo material and my cousin gets a great indie film quality wedding video.

Another Dead Kennedy

No, I'm not talking about my favorite punk rock band of all time or the political dynasty from Massachusetts. I'm talking about the father of the American Taliban, Dr. James Kennedy. Another theocrat down, millions more to go! Am I being a little bit harsh on a guy who just kicked the bucket? You bet I am! And I really only reserve the right to be that much of a dick for people who I truly feel deserve it. And nobody deserves it more than the guy who came up with the idea of Christian Dominionism. You know how the Taliban tried to run Afghanistan under the most strict Muslim law? Dominionists want the same exact thing for the US, only replacing the name Mohamed with Jesus, Allah with God, and Koran (and Constitution) with Bible. However you may feel about religion, any group who wants to replace our freedoms of (and FROM) religion with religious law is about as anti-American as it gets and they need to be stomped out like insects. But instead, they have the ear of the republican party straight up to the president and they have been busy converting as many members of our military as they can. That's right, these people want the force of the military since their brand of extremism would never be legislated. This is some scary shit that we really need to nip in the bud while we still can.

Supply-Side Insanity

So at what point did the conservatives evolve from people who actually conserved to the Gordon Gekko-esque socio-economic hit men that they are today? Jonathan Chait explores the psychosis that is Supply-side Economics, AKA Reaganomics, AKA Voodoo Economics, excerpted in the National Review: A generation ago, Republican economics was relentlessly sober. Republicans concerned themselves with such ills as deficits, inflation, and excessive spending. They did not care very much about cutting taxes, and (as in the case of such GOP presidents as Herbert Hoover and Gerald Ford) they were quite willing to raise taxes in order to balance the budget. While many of them were wealthy and close to business, the leaders of business themselves had a strong sense of social responsibility that transcended their class interests. By temperament, such men were cautious rather than utopian. Over the last three decades, however, such Republicans have passed almost completely from the scene, at least in Washington, to be replaced by, essentially, a cult. [full article] And it only takes 5 paragraphs before the name of this blog's favorite villain appears. Read in amazement about how an economic system further enabling the wealthy to absolutely plunder the poor was wrapped up and sold as being good for the working class. See how bare naked greed was poorly masqueraded as a populist idea and how the public bought it. Then wake the hell up and do whatever you can to start to erase that goddamn Reagan Legacy already! [via]

Wednesday Morning Roundup: Larry, Mitt and Fred

Did you hear the one about the staunchly anti-gay republican senator who pleaded guilty to trolling for sex in a mens room and then resigned but now reconsidered his resignation? I am so glad that Larry Craig is managing to stay in the news now that Howard Stern is back from a week-long vacation, because there really is no other broadcaster in America who is as qualified to tackle this sordid story than the King of All Media. I expect Richard and Sal will be tapping their toes in mens rooms and recording the results all throughout New York City. There's a new Mitt Romney website. No, I'm not talking about that blog that I whupped in Battle of the Blogs yesterday (you 5 people who voted for that ridiculous waste of bandwidth, line up to be spanked by Larry Craig). No, this one isn't a bunch of campaign fluffery. It's just the facts. And lastly, a day before Fred Thompson is supposed to throw his hat in the ring, I've got an exclusive video of his announcement speech.

Am I Still Just Paranoid?

I've always thought that the Bush administration had used 9/11 as their personal Reichstag fire, a national tragedy to exploit for massive executive branch power grabs of dubious constitutionality that they would have never had the chance to get otherwise. Apparently, according the extreme right and the Anti Defamation League (should be renamed the Complete Lack of Irony League after their investigation of Borat, but that's another story), the only Hitler comparison you are ever allowed to make involves massive genocide. So it's OK to compare somebody like Milosovich who indeed was a genocidal shitheel, but to those who try to frame the debate, Bush's body count is far too low for us to compare him to Hitler in other ways. It would be much harder attempting to explain to us the subtle differences of executive powergrabs in the PATRIOT Act and the Enabling Act than it would be to act all offended and evade the glaring similarities entirely. They'd rather call those of us who would bring up the subject paranoid. But as Homer Simpson might say, "paranoid like a fox!" I challenge anybody of any political persuasion to defend the following quote: "We're one bomb away from getting rid of that obnoxious [FISA] court." I've been accusing this administration of thinking that way, but the idea that they might even think of putting it into words sickens me to the core. This was a direct quote from one of Dick Cheney's top aides, pining away for that one elusive terrorist act that could help further erode the principles of law that our country was founded upon. Who can still defend these people? Oh, I forgot, Bill Clinton got a blowjob so that makes it all OK.

Tom Tomorrow

I just love Tom Tomorrow's comic strip, This Modern World. In this week's strip, Tom somehow managed to distill a year's worth of conversations between myself and other right wing bloggers down to 6 panels. And in other comic strip news, the latest Opus strip has been censored by many newspapers including the Washington Post because it would be such a shame is some of those poor sensitive fundy Muslims were offended. Go riot in the streets over this one, you oppressive bastards!