For Your Consideration

So, Valerie (the girl I'm married to, the one with the hair everyone likes) and I were in the Brooklyn Film Race last weekend. Our crew wrote, shot, and edited a film in 24 hours.

We received a theme (jealousy) and a prop (tinfoil) at 10 pm Friday night. Then Nick Bernardone (our director), Helen Berger, Rick Shine, and Brandon Hines (our producer), and myself were up until 6am writing the script. Then we had an actor call (Valerie and folks) at 7am and after 4 hours of set dressing and rehearsal we began filming.

The whole film (which had to be under 3:30) was filmed in one take. We did 14 takes and used take 12.

The premiere was at Brooklyn Heights Cinema on Thursday and in about four weeks the judges will vote on the films. We'll see. I'm filming a lot more these days. More to come, I hope.

Enjoy our film. Oh, the title was not our idea and we (Valerie and I)think it is lame.

Familiar Strangers

The Informed!

So I’ve been working at 30 Rock for about two months now and I have wholly abandoned my blog like a street urchin. I apologize to it. I’m back now.

The main problem is that certain things like blogs and Facebook and Twitter and other such lovely wastes of time have to be checked surreptitiously. It’s one of those “look like you’re working” jobs. The problem is that I’m actually working a lot of the time and so in those five minute breaks where I can check, nothing gets written.

I’ve decided to follow Val’s example and cut down the length of my posts. Brevity is one of Valerie’s strong suits. Her tiger uppercut is her other. This I believe will allow me to blog again.

My other goal is to get a daily writing goal again. So I hope to post that stuff. And I hope to be awesome again.

Just for fun, here’s some lines from my journal that never went anywhere:

this is mud pie, these are mud hearts
and we say let’s play God
but our breath is wrong

*

a fist of meat grasped to the gutter

*

maybe that was your miracle
to find a metal fence hard enough to halt you
and soft enough to give a little

*

the kid who couldn’t stand to be called on
who scribbled equations like dumb kids doodled

*
we will agree to your version of my life

The Giggles

I'm working on putting together a little tv project. There's an indie tv project here in New York called Channel 101 where they host five shows a month. Shows get voted on at a monthly screening and if they get voted for, they continue. If not, they get canceled and another show takes its place. If you're going to watch any of them, I recommend 9am Meeting and not any of the others. Especially for any content wondering people.

There's a show that used to be on Channel 101 called: Welcome to My Study. This was shown to me by a friend at work, and he knew it would be my type of humor. I love it. I'm posting up the first three episodes here. I implore you to watch all three and then find the rest on youtube. The awkwardness will pierce your soul.

Episode I - Welcome to My Study




Episode II - Welcome to My Study




Episode III - Welcome to My Study

John Hughes Forever

It's funny what shapes you as a child. Cinema changed me as I'm sure it did most of us. But I find it funny how the movies we watched or even didn't watch helped in our development. I never saw Goonies or Peewee's Big Adventure or Say Anything or a dozen other movies that shaped friends of mine, Valerie, and others. One movie shaped every idea of who I wanted to be. Right below my Mom, my grandparents, my younger brothers and sister, was a fictional older brother I believed in. That wanted to show me the right way to enjoy school, life, and girls. His name was Ferris Bueller.

Ferris Bueller talked to the camera and that made it seem like he was talking to me. Telling me what to do. Giving me life advice.

Ferris: The question isn't "what are we going to do," the question is "what aren't we going to do?"

Ferris: Anything is peaceful from one thousand, three hundred and fifty-three feet.

Ferris: A: You can never go too far. B: If I'm gonna get busted, it is *not* gonna be by a guy like *that*.

Ferris: Only the meek get pinched. The bold survive.

These were axioms to live my life by. I believed that fun was had by getting away with it. I never expected to be an adult because I only planned my life as far as senior year. I knew by senior year I would be Ferris Bueller. Whether or not I accomplished this I don't know. I did become school president running as a joke. I did get out of an incredible amount of school with excused absences. Also, I was able to forge excused absences for all my friends as well. I got an A in a class I never attended once because I fooled the substitute teacher into believing I was her T.A. And other things which I won't mention as I know my Mom and grandparents read my blog.

I'm sad that John Hughes is dead. He gave me a carefree attitude in the midst of harder times. I decided to see life as fun, a game because Ferris Bueller showed me it could be. In some ways, that movie was one of the most profound things that's ever happened to me. John Hughes understood the power of comedy. Believed in the need for humans to be redeemed and our unrealistic but satisfying need to see villains get it in the end And most of all our daily struggle to find ourselves be rewarded.

Long live John Hughes. You will be missed.

Oh, and as far as my life past high school. I already have that role model. Peter Venkman.

JV Debate Club and News

So here's the deal. I've been online a lot lately but not really updating this blog. I've spending a lot of my time updating Jon's blog and doing stuff for the American Nobody show which he and I write together.

If you haven't seen it yet, Val and I are doing a little segment on the American Nobody show called "The JV Debate Club." The idea of the show is that I defend the idiotic and indefensible in our society and Valerie is the voice of reason and good taste.

You can see the first two segments by clicking below. There's a small clip about Twilight and then last week's was about Mary Murphy, from So You Think You Can Dance.

American Nobody


News 1

On Tuesday, I start at 30 Rock and I'll be working as an office production assistant for Season 4. From there, who knows? But I'm pretty excited. It feels like things are starting to work out, you know? Like "that thing" I've always wanted is not beyond a horizon. I hadn't really told everyone yet because I was sort of waiting for it to be a sure thing. Well, it is. Unless I accidentally kill someone the first day. Fingers crossed!

News 2

I just received my copy of Sow's Ear Poetry Review and my poem, "Building Parachutes" is on page 19. They originally asked for three poems of mine and I already committed to have one published so I gave them two. I was very flattered they wanted that many and a little struck that I had two magazines vying for one piece.

News 3

I may or may not have a warrant out for me in Michigan regarding some jury duty I didn't show up for. Well, you're not getting me, Johnny Law! Canada, here I come!

I Had It Bad

I'm reading tonight at a reading series called I Had It Bad and it's about unrequited love. Most times I just read whatever I want but since this reading is about a specific subject, I kind of freaked out and wrote some new stuff. I haven't decided what I think about it or if I'll use it but here's one of them. And I don't really have an ending for it yet. I'm still working on that.

Great Skate

This is trust
to skate backwards, hands to my shoulders,
a gesture of yes, you are my control,
a mantling, a letting go the periscope,
even though your sixth grade body is taller than my fifth grade,
and I can’t see over you, disco ball blinded,
navigating the under sea swimming of rollerskaters.
This is my first alone in a crowd moment,
for all I know,
you may give the helm to a new boy every Friday.
The intoxication comes from knowing your hands are positioned
to easy slip around my head and lock a kiss
in motion, make a pact of ultimate trust
to close eyes and believe in our course.
But your hands stop brushing my neck somewhere near
the end of Wicked Games or Red, Red Wine.
So my fingers just sweat to hold your hips, the bone jar of your sex
I don’t even ponder now and not for years yet.
But you get it, you swing it back and forth,
feel woman pushing from you like a beak,
your shell stretching in your voice, in the front of your shirt,
which is eye level for me, a mystery
of endless recess discussion.
Maybe is the intimate synchronicity of movement
maybe the aphrodisiac of boiled dogs and nacho cheese,
or the whirring centrifugal tensions of speed
of rounding the same old rink of our parents,
but when my Mom picks me up,
I collapse into the vinyl seat, let the balm of summer vacation
speed through my mouth and my outstretched fingers,
and tell her, “I think I’m in love.”
And then close my eyes. Feel the sunburn of her hands.

Goodnight, Jeff Hanson, You Are Remembered

Jeff Hanson, a singer/songwriter signed to Kill Rock Stars, died at the age of 31 on July 5th from what looks like a fall in his new concrete floored apartment. He had a unique voice, sang in a voice described as "somewhere between Allison Kraus and Art Garfunkel". It was a falsetto, so effeminate that many people couldn't believe it was a man singing. It was almost a contralto in fact.

For me, it felt like losing Jeff Buckley or Elliott Smith all over again. He's always sounded like a chipper Elliott Smith to me actually. They played on the same record label as well. Jeff Hanson was a talented tune slinger playing his heart out wherever they'd let him. The many reviews of his death are a testament to that. You are missed, Jeff. Your songs are immortal.

Here's a few links if you've never listened.

Jeff Hanson - This Time It Will

Jeff Hanson - Hiding Behind the Moon