Halloween is a spectator sport

Today I was walking to work around 8:30 and I enjoyed a few sites.

1) All the fancy bakery employees in witch hats. They are all French, and weary of dealing with Upper East Siders every day. I hope they get some extra, French rudeness in today.

2) Some mom taking her two little kids to school. The girl was nothing special. She had the typical I'm-a-fairy-BUT-it's-too-cold-for-just-a-leotard outfit- thick tights, sneakers, AND a turtlneck. What is/was it with moms and turtlenecks? Remember? It was such a dissapointment to dress down your magical costume with those thick, uncomfortable garments. Ten times worse if your only one had hearts or horses on it. I don't care how many times people told me a princess would wear a turtleneck with hearts on it- if it wasn't shiny it just wasn't part of the outfit. End of story.
But the BEST part of this duo was the little boy in the Buzz Lightyear costume, not so much because it was a good costume, but because the pants were so white and flimsy that you could see through to his Spiderman underpants. Whether mom did this on purpose or not, I couldn't say- but it was awesome.

3) This was more overheard- some guy went around the office trick-or-treating with just a mask. He wouldn't leave until people gave him something edible or spare change. He is my hero. He pissed a lot of people off today.

Alright. I'm sure if I go out tonight I'll see more interesting things, but I don't think I'll be dressed up. Me and Halloween are like me and soccer. Used to love to play it... now I just like to watch it.

You can't tell a hero by his size...

Do you remember the Teeny Little Super Guy?

"Teeny Little Super Guy
Pops right up before your eyes.
He's no bigger than your thumb.
'Snap you're fingers, here I come!'
Don't look in the sky,
Don't look in the sea,
He's inside of you and me.
You can't tell a hero by his size.
'I'm just a teeny little Super Guy (Oh Yeah...)'."

Well I dedicate this post to the memory of my own Teeny Little Super Guy. He was as simple and pure as the TLSG theme song. And if you too dedicate a little bit of your mind and heart to the memory of Zorro, he'll be inside of you too. That can only be a good thing.

Dear Emma Watson...

I was at a sushi place with a group of friends the other night, and one of them let slip that EMMA WATSON WAS NOT GOING TO COME BACK FOR THE LAST TWO HARRY POTTER MOVIES. O...M...G! I did some online hunting around and it turns out that my premiere source of Harry Potter news (www.mugglenet.com) didn't mention it. I breathed a sigh of relief but continued hunting and found a few reports about how Hermione seemed "noncommital" and said that, though she loves making the movies, she also loves a lot of other things. I would imagine that this news has freaked out a lot of people, so she's probably getting a lot of mail right now, begging her to do one thing or another. If I were to write to Emma to make my own suggestion, the letter would go as follows:

Dear Emma Watson,

Hello, I am a big fan of your work. You do an excellent job as Hermione, though I can tell that your superb acting abilities will take you much farther than Hermione's character, and that you will surely never be typecast as the typical know-it-all. I would just like to impress upon you the historical significance of the Harry Potter films. I can think of no other series that allows the viewers to watch as the characters age, year after year, right before their eyes. (This is a lie. It happened in the original Chronicles of Narnia, and many long-running sitcoms- and a documetary film about some kids growing up) Even still, if the Harry Potter series of films is continued to the end with the same cast, then all sixteen years of J.K. Rowling's work will have been realized in print, as well as on film. Sixteen years- about as long as you've even been alive- and you're considering just giving it up because you like to do lots of things. If the Harry Potter films are really dashing all your chances of doing anything you'd like ever again, than you should by all means quit right now. However, if you simply are bored and worried that your life will never be different, please get over it and put up with the three more years, or however long it's going to take. I am sad to say that if you don't, I don't think many people will let you live it down.

Thanks for your time,
R. Mercy Robinson

Wow, I didn't mean to sound so threatening. Poor Emma Watson was probably bombarded when this "noncommital" news leaked out. I really wonder if she has the backbone to quit like that- I could imagine a lot of crazed people hating her. I don't even consider myself 'crazed' and yet here I am writing her a fake letter. I don't even want to think about how the 'crazed' people try to get in touch with her.

So, all in all, I think this should end my month of weekends (wasted?) on Harry Potter. I guess I've just got to suck it up, realize I'm 23, and get with the program as far as entertainment is concerned.

So who wants to get trashed?

Plane Crash kills young girl's walk to the playground

Read full article HERE

It's amusing when children get angry at large terrible events for ruining their day. They are simply saying what we're all thinking. I was walking the dog yesterday and a little girl was trying to pull her mom accross the street, heading East. The mom was on a cell phone and was all flustered. The girl was doing a lot of screaming and whining. Then a mom's friend came running accross the street and was all"We can't go that way, there's been an accident. There are too many bodies" (this is just what I overheard). The little girl kept being like "moooooooooom, mooooommmmyyy,cmmmoonnnn" and I'm sure the mom wanted to smack her.

Long story short, at that time I had no idea that a plane had crashed into anything. I had spent the whole morning inside...probably writing unispired blog posts.

But really, once it was cleared as NOT being a terrorist attack, every single New Yorker was just then extremely annoyed by traffic difficulties it caused. Whatever! Not my building! Phuh! ...I've already heard a bunch of Yankee pitching jokes... tasteless!

So this post is for YOU little girl. People are going to fuck up your day for no reason EVEN THOUGH you're completely wealthy. That's just the way life is. It started raining soon after that anyway so you were lucky. It was a bitter icy-cold rain. Stupid little bitch.

Calling all book lovers...please...help...me

I am working on my online bookstore and I spent about five hours on it today and this is what it looks like (Blarg!) Get ready for lots and lots of broken links! This is really just a crude sample. I guess I'll get the site it's own domain name once it's done and done.

I also worked on my script today but I ran into some boring. That's what happens when you've got all these potentially interesting people and places...but they start mushing together in your mind in the most mundane ways ever. Sappy romance, predictable dialogue...blech. I had to stop. I guess I have to set aside some time to just sit there and think.

So anyway, if you have any links or book reviews you'd like to submit to my site... Thank you, I'll take them. I'll take anything. I should just put a big paypal link that says 'donate money to me because I need it badly.' I wonder if that would work?

...I just like Don Knotts

So I've been working on a script. I don't know if I'm allowed to say it's even a script yet because it's on some multi-colored note cards and it is probably only the first... 25 min? But hey, that means if it were written out it would be 25 pages! And when's the last time I wrote 25 pages of anything? A long, long time ago.

You should look at some scripts and get an idea of what those screenwriters are up against (or an idea of how easy their job is- whichever) Visit Drew's Script-o-Rama

In other news, I went to a taping of the Colbert Report. FUN. It just freaks me out a little because it's a live taping...but the show's not airing right that second... yet the level of professionalism is so high- they just bang that shit out. Here you go, warm you up, run out, tape the show, out the door, bang. over. It makes me nervous. I don't know why. So if you ever catch the episode with Randy Newman singing about blowing up all the other countries of the world, look for me in the front row in a red tee-shirt... I inhaled my gum and started choking a little during the one shot where a camera was actually facing my section of the audience. Smart.

So everyone loves Stephen Colbert, right? Well he was in Strangers with Candy. If you're like me you instantly get an unsettling feeling you your stomach just thinking about the show. Something about it... wasn't... right? BUT if you're not like me, you probably thought it was hilarious and want to own it. Don't say I never did you any favors.

'I've been there. I've done that'

I hate every social situation in the whole world. We can thank my private school/ home-school background for this, even if that's really not the culprit.

So, I used to travel in a small pack of friends. This did not really lend itself to meeting new people- tho, we were in college, and did eventually run into other small packs of like-minded (drunk- weirdo) people.

Then I dumped the pack for one friend, and I feel that is really where we were on top of things. Just me and Angela looking slightly lost, chatting without being exclusive, in a formation that suggested there's supposed to be a third person involved- why not you? Angela and I met many people this way and I find that I miss her greatly in this 'meeting people' area. I will also mention she is a cute Asian. I won't lie, I think that helps.

Last night, however, I (for the first time, I think) was out there on my own just trying to mingle. I can't really give an honest description of how it went because in my mind it felt like hell (though, I would like to note that my dreams last night were very positive). Anyway, good or bad, mission accomplished. I forced myself into a conversation with Jon Benjamin- aka Coach McGurk/ Jason. Overall it was everything I hoped it would be, except much darker.

Thanks to this darkness, and my glaring lenses, I also met Merrill Feitell, the award -winning author of Here Beneath Low-flying Planes. She was kind enough to notice my looming alone-ness and have me sit down. Thank God I ascertained that she is a writer and got the low-down on her book because I am never the one who asks good questions- "what do you do? Do you live around here," And I always seem to be the one answering the questions (with the back of my head screaming "They don't care! They don't need the life story! It's just one of those questions people HAVE to ask!")

I don't know what was happening with the punctuation up above...so I'm starting fresh.

Sum Up: Next time I am in a setting where I am suave and comfortable I must reach out to those more alone and awkward than I so that the big karma wheel in the sky keeps turning in the right direction.



Everyone has to get this because I also want to, and I'm flat broke. Especially since I got lost in Brooklyn and had to take a cab home and give the cabbie (who was the nicest guy in the whole freakin' world) some sob story about my lack of $ and he insisted on taking me all the way home and I just gave him all the money I had and now I'm wishing I had less on me at the time, but then again, he was awesome and the whole ride really just finished off my evening of being reached out to by nice people.

The finality of everything non-digital

I don't know if you know this about me, but I am a film school graduate. At the time I entered my school's program, they were just switching from physical 16mm film editing to digital Mac G4/final cut editing. Students who came before I were spluttering with outrage, and in a way you can't blame them. Our experience would end up being entirely different from theirs- and in their opinion, much less worthwhile. I'll explain why.

When you take film, put it in the camera, and shoot movie onto it, you're taking part in a complicated chemical process that can be completely ruined if you slip up at any time. Oops I left this lever up- no image. Oops I read the light meter wrong- no image. Oops I installed the film wrong- ruined image. etc. etc. For my older classmates, the next step in the filmmaking process was just as infuriating. You get your film back from the lab, and there it is just wound up on a spool. You can't just look at it whenever you feel like. You can't gaze at it hanging in front of you and have a bang-up impression of how many seconds of film you're looking at. Then you must make decisions about how you're going to cut it up. This is literal. You are going to cut your film up and tape it back to together with some expensive scotch tape that doesn't ever seem to hold up well enough to justify the price of it (yeah yeah so it doesn't catch on fire in projectors...whatever). So you cut it up, you tape it back together, you feel pretty crappy about the fact that you didn't get this shot that you wanted, or this shot didn't turn out, or the end of this shot was ruined and you had to cut it shorter than you'd like to... You hand it it (I'm not even going to talk about the hell that is the soundtrack) and it's a finished product ready to be stamped "crappy" or "not that crappy" in front of the whole class.

Then all of the sudden a year later, a bunch of punk-ass freshmen wander in off the street all full of 'ideas' with 'previous film experience' (i.e. a blossoming carreer on youtube) and they shoot their film and they make their mistakes and blunders just as you might have but THEN...they whip out their digi-cam and fudge a quick fix. They sit in the lab on their fancy computers with their expensive headphones and re-use the same shots over and over (something you can't do without a lot of time and more money in the film-only case). They cut their assignments together in six minutes flat and then spend hours just noodling around with their techno soundtracks and excruciatingly long credit sequences. And are their films any better because of this convenience?

Good question. Generally...no. I know that the film-only kids are only complaining because they are jealous (they can't seriously be that concerned with the eduction of their eventual competitors). They say they want us to have suffered as they did- but they hold out that this suffering was superior education and that we learn nothing. Sorry, more bullshit. In actuality, the kids who were going to make good work made good work, and the kids who were going to half-ass it didn't fool anyone before or after the technology shift. There might be a case where somebody had the tech advantage, and that somehow helped them fall into a great movie even though their prior planning and effort didn't seem like it would amount to much. But c'mon- you can't blame technology- that's just good karma.

So next time you're jealous of a bunch of young punks getting the easy way out, stop blubbering and go rescue a kitten out of a tree or something. The only thing that really makes good things come easily is luck. Otherwise you just have to work, work, work.

This is way to long to be considered a good blog post, but whatever. I thought about all of this because I bought some mulit-colored note cards to help me map out scripts and stories (I have problems sequencing events). I felt stupid buying them (poor widdle twees) because i have a computer and you can movie ideas around on your computer any time you feel like it. BUT the computer gives me way too much of a chance to delete ideas entirely. I can tell myself I shouldn't and save everything a million different ways- but in the end I will impetuously scrap it all and as quick as you can type "qwerty"- it's gone forever. Paper is helpful when you're a little manic with your opinions of your own ideas. You can even save crumples. I would suggest it to anyone who's in a rut. Go out and kill you some trees.

Don't slam doors

My neighbors let doors slam behind them. I wish I could slam their head in the door. Then I'd say something like "If that's how much it hurts, imagine how loud it is!" That doesn't make a lot of sense, unless there's been a study somewhere about the connection between higher pain and higher volume.

I was being belittled tonight for the fact that I own Monkeybone on DVD. If you've never seen Monkeybone, you're part of the majority. How do you like that? You're one of the many. You are one face in a sea of faces. You walked by Monkeybone and laughed it off just like the jocks and the cheerleaders and the nerds AND the Jesus freaks. If you'd like to start a conversation with a stranger, and you can't think of anything to talk about you could say "Hey, did you ever see Monkeybone?" When they say, "no" you can say, "me neither. Didn't it look awful?"

That's how 'status quo' you are. You're just another 'Generic Jim'

Wow. That last phrase brings back memories.

Moving on, I Netflix-ed "Les Choristes" (The Chorus) and I'm excited to see it. It sounds just like The Gridiron Gang, but with children instead of teens, music instead of football, and (sadly) no Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson.

~~**I have just IMDB'd The Rock to get you all a proper link to his profile in case you don't know who I'm talking about...and I have discovered that He is going to appear in a movie (does not specify live-action or cartoon) entitled Jonny Bravo !!! Holy wow. Forget the link- go IMDB him yourself- I'm too excited to be technical and organized**~~

whew, that was exciting.
I guess I'll get back to staring at lists that I am thinking about making of things I could do or maybe should but not all at the same time- or maybe- maybe simultaneously...If I should be doing them at all, depending...depending on what they are and how long they'll take.

Harry Potter Parking Lot

There's a film called "Harry Potter Parking Lot" made by the same people who gave you "Heavy Metal Parking Lot." If you're not familiar, the basic theme is to visit a parking lot outside of a large event and interview the most avid fans of this event. In "Harry Potter Parking Lot" the filmmakers stood in line outside some J.K. Rowlings book signings and let the kids just gush about how much they love Harry Potter. Many of them are dressed as book characters, clutching wands, reciting spells. One boy holds the book open for the camera and recites the first page perfectly.

I just don't know what it is but I'm addicted too. The sad part is, the movies only make it worse. Those kids seriously ARE Harry, Hermione, and Ron. But on top of that, I actually get to SEE them grow up. They were 12 or so when this began- they're 17 now. Someone popped in the first movie the other day and I just kept saying "look how young they are!" over and over and over.

If I were to make a movie, and the only pop-culture reference in it were Harry Potter, I don't even think it would date the movie later. I think it would be as if I referenced Lord of the Rings or The Chronicles of Narnia. That's how big Harry Potter is. He's epic.

I've been seriously considering how I'm going to handle giving the Harry Potter series to my children (that I might have, one day). Would I have the strength of will to give them one book each year so that their life corresponds with Harry's? Because that's one of the most 'magical' features of the series, right now. My little brother has actually grown up at the same rate as the books have been published. When he got to the end of one, he couldn't just pick up the next one and move on to the next year- he had to wait. And when he did get to the next one, he was a year older as well. Harry's social problems were changing at his rate- he started noticing girls at the same time and everything (as far as I know).

So there. I'm going to post the fifth book here because it's the one I don't own. I need it quite badly. Harry Potter has been taking over my weekends for almost a month now and I need to stop all this blubbering and be productive. RE-reading isn't productive reading, and it was a stretch to consider reading kids' books productive in the first place.

I went beta

Ok kids, I went beta. If you are a 'blogger' I suggest you do the same. It's useful, though I did discover that those fancy template designers really do know what's up when it comes to attractive and functioning design and color schemes. Thank you template designers.

In other news-read this article about teleportation - it's happening NOW!

Ok so did you read it? Now go to this website to learn what 'quantum entanglement' is. You'll thank me later, but you really should be thanking the person who took all that time and effort to describe such a detailed idea to you. It is complete with illustrations.

I've got so many ideas for posts to come. Look out Saturday- I feel like it might be a three post day- How unnecessary!

How's that for follow-through?

www.friendsinneedof.com/retrofriend

There it is. Old-computer-game-inspired as well as Halloween themed. Check it out and post to remind me of other super old-school features I have forgotten.