Quote of the Day

"A woman is like a tea bag. You never know how strong she is until she gets into hot water."
- Eleanor Roosevelt

Multiple Guess

Match the person with where I've seen them over the past three days...

a. Shooting a film outside my apartment
b. Performing in Cannes
c. Taking my plane back to New York

1. P Diddy
2. Busta Rhymes
3. Woody Allen

Cannes Film Festival

I've done the festival circuit and seen plenty of festivals, but nothing is quite like Cannes. Press everywhere. Indie filmmakers in tuxedos with black bowties. Posh entourages in white linen.
Stressed phone calls in every language trying to close a deal or find a deal. Screens on the beach with dozens of million-dollar yachts on the water behind them with techno throbbing across the plage. Stunning. It's 8am and I'm headed back...

I See You Baby...

Alphachick posted this on her blog, but it's too good not to pass on... The numbers are in (not that the blondes could actually count them) and officially Brunettes do have more fun than blondes.

And on and on...

March...
April...
May...

Is this what they mean by Time starts to go faster? I think that actually Time picked up its coat, walked out the front door, and left me standing there wondering what happened to the past few months. Luckily it took the winter weather with it.

The sun is shining on New York... I can see it through the huge windows in my new office space. You don't realize how much your own space is important to you until you don't have it anymore and this space has been liberating and invigorating... from here you will find I actually remember my password to my blogger account, I am working on several new feature projects and looking at picking up some commercial work, and most immediately... preparing for the Cannes Film Festival. So get ready to get jealous! The updates will be coming fast and furiously... but later...

Earth Hour 2008 - Get Involved

There was a brainstorming session that led to an idea similar to this, but hopefully Earth Hour has enough momentum to make an impact in the US. The stats themselves are staggering: "On 31 March 2007, 2.2 million people and 2100 Sydney businesses turned off their lights for one hour - Earth Hour. This massive collective effort reduced Sydney's energy consumption by 10.2% for one hour, which is the equivalent effect of taking 48,000 cars off the road for a year." I'd like to see a picture from space that showed the impact of this one hour.

Check it out and commit yourself to eating dinner by candlelight at http://www.earthhour.org/

Just because

I used to make friends with the wrong crowd
Just because I could
I used to challenge what couldn't be done
Just because... who else would
I used to do what I shouldn't do
Just because I thought who
are you?
Now I walk a mile in the blistering snow
Just because I can...

The Great Escape

I've read about cinematic masters who were awed by their experiences in a darkened theatre. The lights go down and a career is born. They escape to celluloid, saving every penny to buy a ticket. They vow their lives, they focus on their dream on a story you not only want to tell, but must tell. Something that you want people to hear, that resonates in your life. For me, it was a means of communicating. Something I could throw my entire being into. I was absolute. I was focused. But I was not awed.

Yesterday I found myself in a movie theater. A rare treat these days. Watching "The Orphanage" - Guillermo del Toro's suspenseful homage to Peter Pan. Not the most amazing film, but as the credits rolled and the music held me silent in an empty theater, it hit me. It wasn't another Saturday night that I had filled with a movie where I was running off to the next bar. It was my escape. I wanted to be here. I wanted to stay here. I wanted to live here with the stories in my head being twenty feet tall. I could finally see what I had not seen before.

Why now? What had changed? Perhaps it was too easy to see a film or a theater piece when I was younger and I took it for granted. Perhaps my Saturday nights were too chaotic to stop and breathe in what I had just seen. Or maybe I never had the means to express myself behind a lens and communication is a two-way street. Ultimately, I defer to how the intangible is described in "The Orphanage": sometimes seeing is not believing - it is the other way around.

Randomness Required

Almost two months later... I've had so many things to share, but the thoughts seem to remain captive in my head while my body heaves through life with less and less sleep. It's like being in exam week at university... for three months straight. Brutal.

Amongst the Headlines that may or may never come:
- Manhattan Mamas
- Connect Four
- Upcoming Events / 2008 Forecast
- Traveling Thoughts
- Loss vs. Losing

It's now 6am... I've slept for 3 hours in the past 35. Reaching the point where I don't even kid myself about being able to go back to sleep anymore. I'm a zombie. Trying to keep up, stay positive, remember to eat. The basics. I miss the beautiful random moments... energetic creative conversations, being in a hurry to get to a meeting where you've got to be at the top of your game, taking the long way home, not going home.

It's a long way to go... and I'm tired.

And the song is playing now reminds me...
Combat baby come back baby
Fight off the lethargy
Don't go quietly
Combat baby
Said you would never give up easy
Combat baby come back

Recent Readings

New York City is on track to have fewer than 500 homicides this year, by far the lowest number in a 12-month period since reliable Police Department statistics became available in 1963. But within the city’s official crime statistics is a figure that may be even more striking: so far, with roughly half the killings analyzed, only 35 were found to be committed by strangers, a microscopic statistic in a city of more than 8.2 million. If that trend holds up, fewer than 100 homicide victims in New York City this year will have been strangers to their assailants.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/23/nyregion/23murder.html?ei=5065&en=e317f6d8d8c57dde&ex=1196485200&partner=MYWAY&pagewanted=print

vs.

The Impact of Legal Abortions on Crime:
"Evidence that legalized abortion has contributed significantly to recent crime reductions... appears to account for as much as 50 percent of the recent drop in crime"... as opposed to higher incarceration rates, stricter gun control laws, and increased number of police.
http://pricetheory.uchicago.edu/levitt/Papers/DonohueLevittTheImpactOfLegalized2001.pdf

Journeys...

On the train headed back from the Hamptons, I watch the landscape slide by... allowing glimpses into minor moments... empty parking lots, deserted cars, industrial wastelands, seas of yellow school buses... slices that touch the railroad tracks. And backyards... with bright blue pools and century old houses with collapsing rooftops... the train slows to its next stop. in slow motion I see a family standing around in their yard - their slice - organizing the rules of family football, getting ready for the huddle. For a moment it is my field of grass where my childhood is flourishing amongst debatable touchdowns and imaginary yardlines. It is my family rolling, throwing, tackling as the train pulls away from the station... My time slips behind. I want it back. I want that moment back. I want the laughter and the stained knees. The leaves that crunch under a run to the goal-line. My mind grasps at the memories of a family now scattered but not shattered that will most likely never be in the same slice of autumn again. The train moves me forward... Life moves me forward... And a new slice of life begins... here it is spring... and there is much to do before autumn arrives for this new family.

April Dupont

Of Boston. Died Oct. 14, 2007. Devoted daughter of Raymond and Margret Schindler-DuPont. Sister of David DuPont. She is also survived by many aunts, uncles, cousins & friends. A memorial service will be held Fri., Oct. 19 at Bank of America, Boston College Club, 100 Federal St, 36th fl, Boston, MA. Relatives & friends are kindly invited to attend. Visitation 4-7PM. In lieu of flowers, send donations to the Animal Rescue League, 55 Annas Pl 238 Pine St, Dedham MA 02026 Published in the Boston Globe on 10/19/2007.

April is on the left in this pic

April was a friend of mine through my years at Carnegie Mellon. We started off in the same freshman dorm together and became roommates through our sophomore and junior years. Both stubborn and fun-loving, we cavorted across campus together, supported each other through good and bad relationships, and ultimately pushed each others boundaries until we figured out where to draw the line that separated us. Our clashes were memorable and inevitable, but our friendship deep. Her funeral is Thursday morning. And I feel I've reached a resolution about her death that excuses my absence from the service beyond my newborn son's young immune system... if there was a time to reflect on the circle of life, and if there's a time to appreciate what we have and hold dearest, and if there will be a time to live each moment to it's fullest, that time is now. Thank you, April.

Articles relaying what happened...
http://www.newstimes.com/ci_7190827
http://www.newstimes.com/ci_7212636

Crime Fighting in the West Village

SEPTEMBER 26--Bill Clinton is threatening legal action against a Manhattan restaurant if it does not immediately yank a photo of the former president's daughter Chelsea from the eatery's front window. In a September 18 letter to Osso Buco, an Italian restaurant in Greenwich Village, the ex-president demands the removal of the five-year-old photo of his daughter and Nino Selimaj, the eatery's owner. The picture, which is in Osso Buco's front window, is among scores of similar photos displayed throughout Selimaj's University Place establishment (as well as several other Manhattan restaurants he operates). The offending Clinton-Selimaj photo can be seen at right. These kinds of a-celebrity-once-ate-here photo are, of course, a staple in the windows of hundreds of Manhattan restaurants. The "Dear Nino" letter, which is on "Office of William Jefferson Clinton" letterhead, was authored by Clinton counsel Douglas Band and contends that restaurant's display of the fading snapshot leaves the impression that the 27-year-old Chelsea, a "private citizen," endorses the restaurant. If Selimaj fails to comply with the removal request, the letter notes, "We reserve the right to exercise any and all options available to us."

-- From The Smoking Gun

As a southern "gentleman" I wonder if he tried using the word PLEASE first?

Get the Skinny

Want to see if you're keeping up with the Joneses? Here's a neat little site to rev up your competitive edge (or ego!):
http://zipskinny.com

The calm before the storm

Sorry for the silence lately... no big news, but I have been putting most of my adventures up in the meantime on Here I Come, the other blog with other big news, especially for the next few weeks of my life... so observations on life have been a bit narrow-minded and single-focused... There are going to be plenty of announcements and celebrations, so make sure that I have your mailing address and contact information! Send it to me already!

Burnt

I haven't been to Burning Man in years, but even over the three years where I religiously trekked to the desert with my gallons of water, I saw things change. Black Rock City was initially a place of exploration. Fantastical artwork, endless activities, loud music, instantaneous friendships... a mythical environment that one can only understand with their own flesh and blood. Branding and money has no place in BRC, but somehow the ego still found its way in the larger the party got. And the thirst that was quenched by a week of selflessness soon left a sour taste in my mouth. Here's what the city, once an empty desert, looks like during the festival from Google Map. Astounding....In the center of the civilization is The Man, who stands with his arms down until the day of the Burn. Not this year. This year some selfish San Franciscian mentalist burnt the man four days before the festival was set to alight the structure. The burning of the man is symbolic of whatever you need it to be symbolic of: a release the past, an enlightenment for the future, a chance to breathe deep and dance wildly. Apparently it was more important for this actor/writer in the San Francisco arts scene, who perhaps took his recently portrayal of Hunter S. Thompson in a play too seriously, to take this away from the 10,000+ citizens of the temporary city of Black Rock City. As much as I'm over the neuvo-hippie fest and it's pseudo-lovey self-importance, I couldn't help but feel sad for the Burners, those who had traveled far and paid considerable money to be in BRC only to have this moment taken from them. I'm sure they'll turn it into yet another anti-establishment statement.

Hot Hot Hot

From The Arizona Republic:
Aug. 29, 2007 12:00 AM Today should be the day that allows us to tell our grandchildren that we were here in the summer of 2007. Sometime late this afternoon, the temperature is expected to hit 110, and we will have set a record for misery: 29 days of at least 110 degrees in a year.

...perhaps it was the right idea not to be filming in Arizona this summer. Time to start ramping up for a spring shoot!

RIAA matrix

click for a larger image...

from boing boing

ATL Ho!

We all know the baggy pants fad is lame. Hey, I was a card-carrying, pant-sagging member for awhile myself. There is something anti-establishment about looking like shit. But illegal? If Atlanta has its way... (insert Snoop-Dogg nasal here) hell yeah.

The amendment, sponsored by city councilman C.T. Martin, states that sagging pants are an "epidemic" that is becoming a "major concern" around the country.

"Little children see it and want to adopt it, thinking it's the in thing," Martin said Wednesday. "I don't want young people thinking that half-dressing is the way to go. I want them to think about their future."

The proposed ordinance would also bar women from showing the strap of a thong beneath their pants. They would also be prohibited from wearing jogging bras in public or show a bra strap, said Debbie Seagraves, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Georgia.

While the government playing the role of Fashion Police is disheartening and ridiculous, what's even more absurd is the ACLU's claim that this bill is "racial profiling".

But Seagraves said any legislation that creates a dress code would not survive a court challenge. She said the law could not be enforced in a nondiscriminatory way because it targets something that came out of the black youth culture.

Nigga please. This fad didn't come from the Black Youth Culture - unless you are guilty of committing racial profiling yourself because this trend came from PRISON where inmates weren't given belts to hold up their one-size-fits-all pants. And let's face it, MC Hammer poof pants "inspired" whites and blacks alike - but all that proved was that fashion retardation is truly color-blind if not completely blind. But let's ignore that. I would like to know: how do you "discriminate" against pants? Either they show crack or they don't. Oops! Was that crack comment racial profiling, too?!?!?

So who is worse?
The government that can't find anything to do with our misappropriated tax money than to pursue fashion trends? The parents who think it's a good idea for the government to police fashion so that they don't have to scold their children into pulling up their pants? Or the ACLU that adamantly screams for the rights of citizens while blatantly racially profiling their own defendants?

Full article at: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070823/ap_on_fe_st/atlanta_sagging_pants

Random Yotta

If human memory was put into computer memory how much would it equal?

The processing power of an average brain turns out to be about 100 million MIPS (Million computer Instructions Per Second), which is theoretically about 100 million yottabytes(10^24 ).... whatever a Yotta is!