Albert Hoffman, Rest in Peace

I had no idea the good doctor was still alive, but apparently he died last night at the ripe old age of 102. Whether you've experienced it yourself or you think it's an evil chemical, it cannot be denied that his invention had a profound impact on the world. Just try picturing a world where Sgt. Pepper never existed. I would not want to live in that world.

Today on the Who Gives a Shit Channel...

Welcome to the Who Gives a Shit Channel, where we cover all the insipid and meaningless top news stories that nobody should care about. Our top story today is the outrage over Miley Cyrus' Vanity Fair photo. Oh no, they showed a 15 year old's back! Child porn! Child porn! Disney is certain to go bankrupt over this scandal. If they wanted something vanilla and boring, perhaps Sears Portrait Studio would have been better than Annie Leibovitz. Next up is Reverend Wright. There are enough people of every race and political persuasion who are outspoken and angry about something that chances are everybody knows somebody like that. I hope nobody I know ever runs for president and has to waste time with questions about my blog. And possibly the most irrelevant story all day is that Bush is speaking about the economy sometime today. The best thing he could do now is just not to do anything. At least then whatever is wrong can't get any worse. As a reward for slogging your way through three very boring and tedious bits of non-news, here's a whole batch of headlines about a sensational story full of depraved sex and human misery.

It's 3 AM Again

It's 3AM. There's an insidious enemy preying upon America's children. And only one person currently running for president has the experience taking on this enemy. When the new Grand Theft Auto game hits the stores, do you trust Barak Obama to go after a video game? He's never gone after video games before. Even John McCain who bravely fought the Vietcong never fought against video games. These guys don't have what it takes. But Hillary Clinton sure does! She has bravely gone to bat with the religious right to take on video game entertainment before. Hillary is the only candidate calculating and shrill enough to truly take on the evil video game industry who dare to put out cutting edge gaming entertainment for adults. Because as any member of the American Taliban will tell you, nobody should have any entertainment if it isn't appropriate for the youngest children. If you hate video games, please vote for Hillary.

And the Most Annoying Race Goes On and on and on, While a Friendship is Not What it Seems

Well, there were no surprises in tonight's Pennsylvania primary results. Hilary's win still isn't enough for her to win the nomination, so the circular firing squad goes on while McSameAsBush gets a free ride from the supposedly liberal media. I swear, if Hilary's god damned ego blows this one for the dems and delivers us another four years of the same old bullshit, I could very well lose the last tiny shred of faith I have in my fellow Americans. And it's a good thing my wife will never be running for president since the last sentence and the rest of this blog would certainly be the focus of entire network televised debates instead of actual issues. And in other news, what do you do when you find out that the friend you've been relentlessly and unconditionally defending for decades has been reading your secret diaries? I would kick that supposed friend to the curb! I wonder if people will take this incident and start questioning this "friendship" that the US has with Israel without being labeled as antisemitic by the small minority of extremists who have developed this narrow bit of orthodoxy which people are allowed to speak about that country. As always, JSF will be providing right wing coverage of this most annoying primary race in history and possibly surprising us all by not making excuses for Israel's violation of our trust and breech of our national security. Who cares, anyway? I've got Galactica to watch, damnit!

It's Stupid Tuesday Part 3!

Well, after six long and excruciating weeks of watching Hilary and Obama play the most annoying game of political grabass that I've ever seen in my life, they finally have a primary today. The thing is, after watching them for the last 6 weeks, I don't care anymore. I still want Obama to win, but the excitement is gone. I'm more concerned with getting myself caught up on Battlestar Galactica. Sweet frackin' lords of Kobol, I love that show! I got into it really late, but I just started season 2 and last night I even had a dream that I was on the run from the Cylons. If this election had half the excitement, a third of the great writing and a quarter of the great acting of this show, I would be taking the day off from work today to watch the cable news channels all day long. I guess you could say that politics have made me bitter, so I cling to intriguing TV shows. But my conservative partner in primary coverage, JSF, is back from a blog break, and he's promising to have perspective from the dark side on this horse race later in the day. In the meantime, don't miss his partisan reasons for being against environmentalism. It's so wrong on so many levels that I need time to sort them all out before even attempting a comment. Of course, being on the wrong side of almost every issue is part and parcel to being a conservative, but it's the mind boggling logic that makes JSF so lovable.

Incredibly Important Newsflash!

Folks, there's been a story that has been keeping millions of us on the edges of our seats for over a week now. No, I'm not talking about that stupid primary tomorrow. I'm not talking about the child raping polygamist cult in Texas or the wackjobs who are defending their "right" to keep raping little girls for Jeebus. I'm not talking about gas prices going through the roof. I said important and I meant it. Artie Lange is still on the Howard Stern Show! We have at least another 2 and a half years of his personal trainwreck comedy to listen to 4 days a week, unless of course he goes and physically attacks somebody on the show again. Tomorrow this blog will be back to the same boring old politics, but for now, revel in this not even remotely safe for work Beer League trailer:

The Right vs The Earth

I try to understand the thinking behind today's conservatives. I may not agree with them, but in many cases I try to at least understand where they're coming from. The one thing that I cannot quite understand is the level of vitriol they have toward environmentalism. I know that as adherents to complete and total free market capitalism (except when a little bit of government tweaking can benefit somebody who can help finance them but otherwise would not benefit a free market, think companies that rhyme with Schmenron or Falliburtin), they are against any kind of laws that might regulate business, and that of course includes environmental regulation. Sure, if people want clean air then the market will clean the air, and if it doesn't, then the market dictates that the air is supposed to be dirty. I know, it's ridiculous, but they actually believe this kind of shit. They take their position against environmentalism to new and exciting levels because to them, it's personal. They have better things to say about the child raping members of polygamist cults than people who drive hybrid cars. And with the majority of scientists in agreement that there's something wrong, these people go with a minority of scientists who are directly linked to the businesses who do not want to change anything that they are doing. What causes ordinary people to forgo reality and science with such levels of fear and loathing? All I can deduce is that it comes out of hate, and a very specific hate at that. They hate Al Gore. They REALLY HATE Al Gore. I can relate to that as I'm no fan of his after the way he blew it in '00, and after my teen aged punk rock self watched his wife's attempt to ruin rock and roll in the 80's. But the right isn't satisfied in just stealing the election from him. If they had it their way, elections would mean the winner actually kills the loser with their bare hands to demonstrate to the opposition and the world their massive manliness (but only if the winner is their guy, of course). No, here's the guy who dared to run against their imperial lord and messiah of neoconservative asshattery, who then won the Nobel prize and the Oscar for his Power Point presentation on climate change. And let's face it, the guy does come off a bit smug. And that pisses them off enough to forget about the majority of scientists (besides, everyone knows that science and truth and fact and all that has a liberal bias) and just be against anything he has to say. And that, in a nutshell, is modern conservative intellectualism. I would love to find out what my conservative readers have to say on this. Forget about my sarcasm, that's just my style. I really want to know why you are so against environmentalism.

No Good Can Come of This

Bush meets Joey the Rat. What sort of hell can a corrupt warmonger and a former Nazi Youth and head of the Inquisition unleash upon humanity together. Here comes the ironic statement of the century... "We need your message that all human life is sacred . . . and your message that each of us is willed, each of us is necessary and each of us is loved," Bush said. Imagine a guy who lied us into a war talking about the sanctity of life! Save those fetuses, we'll need them for cannon fodder!

Worst. Blog. Ever.

I've come across some decent blogs on Blog Explosion. And I've waded through some crap. But there's one guy who always manages to piss me right the hell off. He's some holy rolling dipshit who seems to think that Jesus was a right libertarian and has a whole bunch of blogs where he makes inane political rants and then wraps it around some irrelevant Jeebus stuff. Now I'm not one of those atheists who automatically goes after anyone because they are religious. I just go after asshats, religious or otherwise. I've considered lambasting this particular jerkoff here before, but I've thought better of it, until now. The drivel that this imbecile posted today just could not go ignored. He's outraged that the big bad police state is not allowing these wingnut fundamentalist Mormons in Texas to keep on RAPING YOUNG GIRLS. The big bad police state is apparently violating their rights to practice their religion, part of which is RAPING YOUNG GIRLS!!! I've always found right libertarians to be annoying much in the same way as religious fundamentalists. While one group takes various mythology to be the absolute literal truth, the other takes economic theory as absolute literal truth, and they both take it to extreme levels. So when you've got somebody out there using fundamentalist belief in ancient mythology that would never hold up to the light of science and rational thought to attempt to justify a fundamentalist belief in an economic system that would never work in the real world and you've got one of the most annoying assholes in the entire blogosphere! I think I'm going to start my own religious sect. I received a revelation from the Flying Spaghetti Monster who touched me with his noodly appendage and told me that the one true way to worship him is by smoking crack and beating the crap out of fundamentalist Christian libertarians. Let's see how long I can get away with that claiming that it's my religion and the big bad police state is trying to keep me down. Of course, I do believe that there is a police state that tries to criminalize a lot of things that shouldn't be crimes, but what universe does somebody have to come from to believe that RAPING YOUNG GIRLS in the name of some religion or otherwise is something that that should be freely practiced? And what kind of libertarian censors their blog comments? That is the opposite of libertarianism, dummy! OK, rant over. Thanks for your time.

That's a Wrap!

Whew! Another 10 hours gone and another short film made. This is Murder on the Redwood Express. There is a miniature scale steam locomotive that runs in Tilden Park in the East Bay hills. We take Stella there all the time and she loves it, and I have been wanting to shoot something there for a while since it's an amazing location with lots of great visual potential. The 3 ingredients that we needed to have in this film were something purple, a broadcast and time elapse. We added our ingredients to the script that we already had worked out and headed for the hills to shoot. The folks who run the train couldn't have possibly been any cooler. They offered us special access to places where we could shoot and were very accommodating all around. And the folks who were there to ride the train were also very enthused to be around a real film shoot. The surprise that I mentioned in my previous post is who did our music. I would like to thank Mr. Trent Reznor for putting together his latest album of instrumental soundscapes, for releasing it under a creative commons license that allowed us to use it, and for running his own online film festival for people to make videos with his music. The tracks we used really helped set the tone of the film. We had a great and talented cast and crew for this one. These folks work very well together under a tight deadline, and I love working with them! So, here it is...

Coming Soon to a Blog Near You...

I am working class and I am BITTER! Obama is right and McCain and Hillary only risk showing what a bunch of out-of-touch Washington insiders they are for trying to turn this one against him. But I don't have time for that right now. In one hour I'm leaving the house to go make a movie in 10 hours. My gear is by the door, I'm working on getting adequately caffeinated, and I have a really good feeling about this one. So coming soon will both be a YouTube of this movie I'm making today as well as more on Obama's latest non-scandal, "Bitter-gate."

Movie Making Again

This weekend I'm doing another one of these insane filmmaking contests. It's a Cinemasports event. Cinemasports is "The Iron Chef of Filmmaking," where teams are given a list of "ingredients" and then 10 hours to make a 3 minute film that includes these ingredients which are then screened on the 11th hour. This will be my second time entering one of these events. I did it last fall as part of the Mill Valley Film Festival and it was a blast. This Sunday I'm doing it again in Oakland. In Mill Valley we went in without any idea of what to do beforehand, and we had to spend a couple of precious hours writing and rehearsing. Many of the other teams had obviously written their scripts beforehand and then added the ingredients at the last minute which gave them more time to hone the performances and shots. One of them even had their whole film shot beforehand and then just shot a segment that used the ingredients and stuck it on the beginning. While the latter film was really funny, I don't think it was really really fair, but I don't have a problem with having a rough script beforehand and that's what we're doing this time around. There are other differences in this shoot from the last one. The first difference is the genre. I'm most comfortable working with comedy. I listen to hours of comedy every day. I love making people laugh. But while I really enjoy watching and making comedic films, I also really enjoy watching other genres and I've been wanting to try making a film in another genre. So this one is going to be a thriller/crime drama. We're using an incredible location which is going to give us the opportunity for some unbelievable shots. I'm also going to wear less hats on this production. On most of my films I have written, shot, directed and edited. This time I'm going to focus on shooting and directing while others write and edit. I met my writer on the last cinemasports shoot though that one wound up being mostly written by the whole cast and crew. She's been an incredible assistant director on the last two shoots I've done and I look forward to giving her a chance to write the whole script this time. I've never worked with my editor before, but he's been doing it professionally and he also set up the local video group I'm in, so I have full confidence in his abilities. And the music is going to be a special surprise. I really hope to reach a new level of film making this time around. The potential is there. I just hope I can pull it off. Of course, I will post the finished product as soon as I can.

Sony Entertainment can Suck It!

The man is working hard on keeping me down. Today I got an email from YouTube telling me that one of my videos was yanked due to copyright infringement. I figured it was probably one of my videos where I "borrowed" some music and the idea of that was annoying but not outrageous. When I realized that it was The Writers Room, my levels of rage went off the charts. The Writers Room was my response to the writers strike. It took place in a writers room for a real sitcom, The Office, and while character and company names from the show were mentioned (and half an NBC peacock is visible), the idea that there was anything remotely resembling infringement is laughable. This means that if you even talk about a TV show online somewhere and mention characters, some corporation can go after you for it, and this is chilling. Part of me really wants to fight this, but I barely have enough time to make a short film every now and then let alone getting myself involved in a court battle against an army of slick corporate bloodsuckers even though I know that I'm right on this. But I don't get how a show that actively encourages fan created videos would take issue with a fan created video that pokes fun at fan created content more than anything else. The premise was that the producers of the office hired a bunch of fan fiction writers to write episodes while the real writers were on strike. And when I searched for other Office fan videos on YouTube, there was plenty of it still up. To me, this means that Sony didn't like the idea of their production executives being portrayed as clueless wonks and they flexed their corporate muscle to get it off of YouTube. You can still see it here for the time being, and if that gets yanked too, I will make damn sure it winds up in too many places for these bastards to do anything about it.

Music, Music, Music and Damn Dirty Apes

Last night we finally got around to seeing Once. Yeah, I'm something like a year behind the curve on this one, but it's harder to stay on the cutting edge of pop culture when you've got a little monkey to chase around. I'm always a bit leery about musicals, and I'm not sure why since I usually really tend to enjoy them. This one blew me away. I always expect the music in a musical to be a little bit on the cheesy showtune-ish side, but that couldn't be further from the case with this film. It was pure indie rock goodness. That they pulled off a low budget musical shot guerrilla style on the streets of Dublin is impressive to say the least, and the fact that one of the songs won an Oscar is amazing. Check out this scene where they're recording When You're Mind's Made Up. Another example of me being incredibly slow on the uptake is my recent discovery of Marvin Gaye's 1978 album Here, My Dear. My cousin told me about this one a few years ago and although I've always known her to have impeccable musical tastes, I never got around to getting this one until last week when my neighbor reminded me of it. When Marvin Gaye got divorced from Berry Gordy's daughter, the settlement was that she would get half the profits from his next album. At first he considered just doing a lousy album, but instead he put out this heartbreaking and bitter double album of incredible soul, much of which is him singing directly to his ex. It tanked anyway. There wasn't even a hit single on it. But years later, it's now considered one of the greatest albums of all time. Here's a track called Anger: Gnarls Barkley have a new album out and it's really good, but don't watch their latest video if you even think you might be prone to seizures. I'm not kidding. It's banned from MTV because it could trigger a seizure and I would feel really badly if somebody, even a republican, got one from looking at it on my blog. And lastly, I may not have been a fan of his politics, but I am definitely a fan of his acting and I'm sorry to see him go. This one's for you, Charlton Heston:

The Politics of Boredom (or just bored with politics)

Jeesh, I complained about how boring the election cycle has become a week ago and still no improvement. It's incredibly frustrating to see the democrats quite possibly blowing another election and ushering in 4 more years of the same old bullshit. The thing is, I'm not really sure if I truly believe that this long and ugly primary battle is going to be their undoing or if it's just the pessimism and cynicism of 8 years watching the worst administration ever do their screw job on this country while Americans continued to beg for more. I don't think I'm the only bored and uninspired political junkie. Most of the political blogs I read on a regular basis seem to be in a bit of the same pickle, but at least they are attempting to post about it, even if there seems to be a lack of enthusiasm. The mainstream media are bored, too. Bowling-gate, anyone? WTF?!?! I can't even find myself able to get outraged over genuinely outrageous things. The situation in Tibet? Our melting down economy? The continued human rights nightmares in various other parts of the world? Airline safety going down the tubes? The Battle in Basra? I can't seem to find it within myself to care about any of this stuff at the moment. What the hell is wrong with me? Am I becoming one of the apathetic masses? Is this stupid primary race making me cranky, or is it just that the spring is in the air and I'm more interested in playgrounds and picnics than any of the goings on outside of my little corner of the world? I think tomorrow I'll have some musical recommendations, and I'll eventually get back to commenting on politics when something worth commenting on happens, or perhaps I'll just post every day complaining about how boring the political scene is right now.

WMDs Found and bin Laden Caught

Saddam Hussein's massive stockpile of weapons of mass destruction has been found today in Iraq. US troops entered the underground bunker where they found backpack nukes, chemical and biological weapons, and a partially built ICBM with Uncle Sam painted on the tip. In the back room of this bunker, Osama bin Laden was caught unaware because he had headphones on while listening to the Anthrax album Spreading the Disease, frantically trying to decode the tricks to biological weapon deployment obviously encrypted in Scott Ian's guitar shredding. President Bush addressed the world on TV today proclaiming the war on terror over, the war in Iraq justified, the upcoming elections cancelled and the 22nd amendment null and void, making himself the president for life to the cheers of all Americans of every political persuasion. Bill O'Reilly, Ann Coulter, Sean Hannity and Michelle Malkin engaged in a celebratory wild sex orgy on a Fox News set, all moaning "I told you so" with each thrust, which accidentally went out live on the air during family hour. Crews immediately went to Mount Rushmore with dynamite and jackhammers to change the faces of Teddy Roosevelt and Thomas Jefferson to Bush and Cheney, while bin Laden was turned over to the NYPD where he was violently violated with a broomstick before being tossed into a crowded cell of Aryan Brotherhood members at Rikers Island, all broadcast on pay-per-view and hosted by Vince McMahon.