The Corn is Green

In Connecticut.

Do What You Are

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bm-Jjvqu3U4&feature=plcp

Movie Advice

See Magic Mike for Matthew McConaughey

See Bellflower (Netflix it) for the filmmaking, all around.

See Josh Mix Sound

It's lovely.

Color Correct

http://boxthemovie.wordpress.com/2012/07/24/color-correction/

Public Declaration

Must get back to my book. Finish it up. It’s been in my drawer for a few years.

Rain Makes Corn

Oh that song:

“Rain makes corn

Corn makes whiskey

Whiskey makes my girl just a little bit frisky.”

Got a lot of prickly girls in Indiana right now?

Sorry about the dry ears.

Maybe it’s time to face the global weather problem?

People change when?  During extreme pain or threat of death or when the sex dries up.

Maybe all these crinkly brown corn stalks are just what we needed.

Pain=transformation.   I wish this were not true…  But I didn’t design it.

Go ahead, guys. Figure out how to get your corn wet again…

A Buncha Shit on Monsoon Wednesday

Today there was a monsoon.

I am covered with flea bites and I don’t know why.

Apartment hunting. To buy. Lots of paperwork. Give me trees.

Small children are so small.

If people would stop wanting so much, well… I guess I would not finish typing this sentence…

Yoga is necessary if you want to stop all this aging nonsense. It’s the tight muscles that yank you into wretched tired deformity.

Fresh Oregano growing on the window sill.

I am all for money. I am all against money that just sits there.

Fat pens really are the way to go.

Merry Christmas….somewhere in the universe.

My parents are young. In their early seventies. They have been around since I was born.

Tennessee Williams wrote so many plays. He always went for it. I prefer him to our sober moralist logician, Arthur Miller.

I sometimes piss people off. But then they like me because I wasn’t afraid to do just that. Fuck it.

I am all about hanging out in natural dog areas. Maybe that’s why I have flea bites.

All my old friends are beautiful. Allah be praised.

I prefer coffee ice cream on my waffles, in general.

Sex is overrated, unless it’s really good.

People are really fat for a reason. Because the first caucus every four years is in a corn state.

Three Newsies

1. By 2015, 20% of GDP will be medicine. This must become a utility…so it can be lowered. Utilities are highly regulated. Medicare for all, please.

2. Fuck the Boy Scouts. In the ass.  (They set up their own jokes.)

3. Mitt Romney is silly. Doesn’t he realize that Obama is Christ? Okay, Christ yet-to-be-realized?

I Love Mitt's Peevishness

Oh how Romney wants to be The Decider!

The guy is so upset that Obama is telling the truth (mostly) about him. The Democrats have learned the filthy rules from the Republicans: attack at all times. And now the Dog-tied-to-the-roof guy wants to engage in a gentleman’s game only?

I love when the super entitled can’t believe that someone is looking right in their face and telling them what they are.

I have no problem with people being super rich. Go ahead. Be super rich. But don’t lie about how you did it. And don’t get so peeved when someone points out how you did it.

It’s a global economy and maybe what Romney has done has all been legal. But so once was slavery, women not having the right to vote, child labor…and those turned out to be bad ideas.  When you do something that is legal, but it’s a bad idea---you simply end up paying the piper.

It’s legal for me to go to Thailand to have sex with children, but you don’t see me doing that. It’s simply against my nature and not the right thing to do, either. So I will not do it. I will not send my money offshore. I will not outsource any jobs I create to other countries. I will do the best I can and I know there will be limits to how it all turns out.

People don’t need that much in order to be happy. Apparently, an income of 75K/person is the line where anything more is not necessary for joy. Let’s find some proportion, friends.

Mitt: You can’t have everything. And probably not the presidency. 

Two Things to Get Crazily Happy About

Choose A or B or both for a good weekend:   

      A. The major farming on rooftops in New York.

      B. The inevitable repeal of DOMA this autumn as unconstitutional.

Thank you, New York Times, for keeping me up to date.

And than you, New York, for a perfect 73 degree evening.

Undiagnosed and Alive

I wonder why people so often want a diagnosis when experience is so much more interesting.

Imagine, yes, having a bi-polar relative or knowing a good friend who suffers from severe depression.  These are problems best treated. I talk not of them. I wish them well.

But those of us who are sort manic at times or fall into despair at times or are impulsive or compulsive---we just need to keep ourselves busy and not think about what these behaviors might all mean. There is no real logic to them anyway. Plus, we need these wacky energy flows to actually get things done. The self motivated man? Nah, he just has impulses that have to be acted upon. Irrational stirring. And this is fine.

There are people who want everything to be a problem and to have each one defined as such.  But remember during medieval times? There was the town lunatic, the local witch, the fool, the eternally sad, the forever lovelorn, the filthy guys, almost all of them who would not bathe, the lothario.  These people went about their lives, energetically in pursuit to express their “dysfunctions,” and so they carried on. 

Society would have you punch a clock, sleep normal hours, have some laughs but almost never any sadness, not get too worked up, unless it’s for lusting after consumer items or wheat packed foods, remain married, solidly raise children with little to no divergence and only take risks when you are certain that what you are doing isn’t really a risk, but a well planned  something-or-other that someone has already tested that worked out mediumly okay.

Isn’t that insane?

Bring it On

I wish the Libertarians would get stronger so the Socialists would get stronger in response.

And why not a government that allows for all types?  Why can’t we separate out, even while living with each other?

Why can’t Socialists simply have a Socialist life, a Socialist web amid the hubbub?

Why can’t you just join a group and then live that way? With a fire wall between your group and the other one?

Could be an interesting social experiment. Of course, commerce between groups would be problematic.  Different pay scales. Different rates of taxation. But it could be worth it.

It would take a mountain of discipline.

I’m ready to try it.

And then the Heat Broke...

And it was beautiful...

I always like when it is very hot or very cold, in a way...you then definitely have something to look forward to. Something more pleasing.

Box is Cut

http://boxthemovie.wordpress.com/2012/07/06/final-cutspotting-session/

Never Have Seen Kiki and Herb

But I did see Mx. Justin Vivian Bond at Under 54...

http://justinbond.com/

Completely worth seeing. (S)he sings Joni's Lesson in Survival.

The best song of the night is Weil's Alabama Song.

(S)he's extremely smart and humorous.

One more Monday night. Go.

It was a wee long tonight...but (s)he was riffing sublimely.

Greetings from Jeffersonville NY

This picture was actually taken during the modern era: Today.

Notice the absence of video games, consoles, electronic screens of any kind.

Kind of makes you feel a little bit more human...

Moore in my Box

Love him, hate him, get his email missives, or wish him mute…   I am with Michael on this.

Friends:  We are on our way to Single Payer Healthcare.

Why?

Because France is better. 

Yours, aging and sickening but worrying less about it,

Don

(I’m not really getting sick.)

From Michael Moore:

More Than a Victory, the Decision Today Was a Mandate for Us to Act ...an end zone dance from Michael Moore 

Thursday, June 28th, 2012 

Dear Friends, 

Even though it's been a few hours now, I'm guessing you're still pinching yourself to make sure you're not dreaming. But yes, it happened. At 10:07 this morning, the conservative Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, John Roberts, not only joined with the liberal justices to completely uphold almost every single part of the Obama health care law, he wrote the majority opinion himself! In fact, he went even further. When he realized that the government had poorly made its constitutional case to the court, he went searching for a clause in their argument and the constitution that would give him the justification he needed to back the administration and to insure that his decision would hold up legally. In other words, even though he is on the opposite side of the political fence, he wrote the Dems' paper for them. Stunning. 

The other four justices? They didn't just vote to overturn the individual mandate part of the law, they all voted to kill the entire Act. 

The media is already spending much time talking about the mandate being the "centerpiece of the law," but the real news is that if you ever have a pre-existing condition, you cannot now be denied insurance. If you are a young adult without health insurance, you can now stay on your parents' plan until age 26. The insurance company can no longer say there is a lifetime cap to your coverage. The insurance companies are now required to spend 85 cents out of every dollar they take in on actual reimbursement for your health care – not on profit or "administrative costs" (some companies have been taking over a 30% cut; Medicare's total percentage of their budget for administrative costs: 2%). 

I know that our side is not used to victories and so we're not quite sure how to respond when we get one out of the blue. For some of us, the first inclination is to point out just how weak the Obama law actually is, that it doesn't provide true universal health care (26 million will STILL be uninsured), and that it leaves control of the system in the hands of the vultures, otherwise known as the health insurance companies. The individual mandate was a huge gift to the private insurance companies, guaranteeing them billions more from millions of new customers. And many of the key provisions of this law don't even take effect until 2014 – and if the Republicans win in November, you can kiss all of that goodbye. 

So, yes, the bill is highly flawed and somewhat wrong-headed – but what it IS is a huge step in the right direction. And today's court decision cements that. The right wing knows this and they are probably unraveling in some not-so-pretty ways right now. And that's why today is a great day. The Right has been smacked down by one of their own! They know what we all know — that the path of history has been, and will continue to move toward the basic human right that all people are entitled to see a doctor and NOT have to worry about losing their home because they can't afford to pay the medical bills. Those days are over, or will be soon, and that is where civilization is headed. It's not headed back to the days of Oliver Twist. Today's victory is momentum, it's forward motion, and we WILL have true universal health care in this country in the not too distant future. 

So take some time tonight to celebrate; this is a victory for the people. Actually, more than a victory, it is a mandate that all of us must now make sure that a second-term Obama continues to move the ball down the field, toward a system like they have in every other First World country on the planet. He simply has to improve Medicare and then expand it to every citizen in the country. The countries that do this, their people live an average of two to four years longer than we do. Is there a reason anyone doesn't want an extra four years of their lives? Or that our babies would have a better chance of surviving their first year like they do in the 48 countries that have a better infant mortality rate than we do? Exactly who is opposed to this? You'd have to be a bit…crazy. 

And that, I've come to believe, is the true divide in this country. It's not blue state vs red state, liberal vs conservative, Democrat vs Republican. The split we have in America can be boiled down in its simplest form to this: On one side are the people who believe Adam and Eve rode on dinosaurs 6,000 years ago – and then there's everyone else. On that first side are the people who've been fed a diet of fear and lies and hate. And who is feeding them? The 1%. The richest people in the country, the ones who aren't done with us yet because they still don't have enough wealth, have done their best to dumb down the population through destroying our educational system and using media to provide them with a vastly distorted sense of reality. The rich's only obstacle is that they only hold 1% of the votes in the country. So they have to try to get a slim majority of Americans to vote their way. And fear, plus keeping them stupid, usually works. 

So that's the battle ahead of us: Organizing and mobilizing the majority of Americans to push for true universal health care, Medicare for All. At one time, back in Illinois, that was the position held by Barack Obama. He will not make this happen on his own. He will only be able to do it when the mass of American people rise up and demand it. Demand it. Why not start tonight? 

Five years ago this week, my health care documentary, Sicko, opened in theaters across the country. I have spent the better part of the decade on this issue, and for me, personally, fully aware of the current law's limitations, I am very happy with today's news – not because of its specifics or nuances, but because it is a road sign, and that sign points in the correct, humane and sane direction. THAT makes this a great day. 

Yours, 

Michael Moore
MMFlint@MichaelMoore.com
@MMFlint
MichaelMoore.com 

Thursday

I believe living in a house in a quiet place gives you more time to simply be, which could even lead to reflection. Whereas city people often make fun of suburbanites, I do think standing in front of your little ranch house, staring at a tree, is not a bad way to spend time.

Good thoughts arise when you are in nature, even nature that has lots of little (and sometimes big) houses in it.

People in cities process a lot of information…but this is not necessarily a state of greater intelligence, but perhaps more an act of greater filtering. You have to work hard to ignore the distractions.

Plus, a void is a great thing to fill. So living in a void can often be a thrill.

Years ago, when I moved to LA, a friend from NYC had gotten there ten months before I had and she said, “You can be a star in LA. In NY, NY is the star.”  

She meant that there is space to be who you are there.  Which is quite something…Or maybe she meant something else. We were very young. 

Kurt Vonnegut Says

“Go into the arts. I’m not kidding.

The arts are not a way to make a living.

They are a very human way of making life more bearable.

Practicing an art, no matter how well or badly,

Is a way to make your soul grow, for heaven’s sake.

Sing in the shower. Dance to the radio.  Tell Stories.

Write a poem to a friend, even a lousy poem.

Do it as well as you possibly can.

You will get an enormous reward.

You will have created something.”

Thank you B.D.

Will I?

Will I ever own a goat?
And if I do, will it make me happy or has this all been a romantic notion that will end in filthy disappointment?

Sunday Night in June

Gay Men and Women are filthy pigs. As are their allies. Sixth Avenue, West Fourth Street Station, garbage everywhere.  For many blocks in every direction. Are you proud?

Summer is over on July 5. One thinks of Christmas that is coming.

I declare all clichés null and void.

I don’t want to live in Brooklyn.

I find small children and dogs to be very sweet. Pretty much all of them. Except for the ones who scream, nonstop, while riding a scooter, for blocks, keeping pace with me, for over twenty minutes. Even if he clearly has a developmental disability, as do so many of them these days, because of the ubiquity of plastic, perhaps.

I was practically a vegan this week. This included eating a lot of peanuts. I did not lose one pound.

I farm on my windowsill. Currently edible: Lavender and parsley.  Just parsley, really, in any meaningful way.

My to-do list can inspire sadness. And I make this list. Do I wish myself to be sad?

I want to know what 3013 will be like.

I will work while failure seeks rest. And if I fail, I will have worked.

We're Having a Heat Wave

And there’s nothing tropical about it...it's normal.

Living in New York City is an eight month wonder of change and interest.

Four months, however, are spent mostly indoors, waiting for it to be over.

I grew up here. But after living for so many years in Southern California, I find it hard to believe that this sort of thing continues to happen, year after year---that no matter what, you can count on severity over and over again.  Beaver Swamp, Arctic Blast.

It makes people pretty tough. But it also makes them seasonal.  The city empties out most of the summer.

During the winter months, people just hunker down and get depressed in the dark.

Being arboreal and equatorial, one longs for leafy breezes in the high-up shade. Warm. Naked. Noisy.

Instead, we roast on hot concrete or trudge through sludge.  Good thing we’re adaptable.

In our Aeron chairs…

Give me Algae

When the plant they genetically engineer (in water, on land, or otherwise) that is used for photosynthesis to create the hydrogen gas to fuel our vehicles goes global, there will be such a shift in the world economy, such a collapse of the oil oligarchy (North American corporations, Russian, Arab and otherwise), that one would think a great peace could arise.

Perhaps.

It is amazing that we are still, as a species, controlled by the thugs who control the greatest commodities. It’s all, “Who owns the corn in the silo?”---and it doesn’t change.

The current grand expression is the most expensive apartment on earth, at the top of the tower they are building in midtown Manhattan that you can see from Ohio, is going to an oil daughter.  Well, a conglomerate daughter. This is both bullying and frivolous.

But mostly?  It’s sad. 

Next Life: Sea Grass

Low stress.

Outdoor living.

Make your own food with sunlight.

Easy growth potential.

And We Left Ptown...

The Blurry one was the nice one...what can I say?

Borderline Politics

Instead of continuing a war in Afghanistan, why not just knit afghans?

If money is the root of all evil, then we all must be completely evil.

If guns are all turned into plowshares, what would we do with the leftover bullets?

Cows didn't ask for this kind of treatment.

Hillary in 2016. She can do it.

89% of Republicans are white. The other 11% are simply self loathing.

I am foremost friends with people I like. Perhaps I need a more winning strategy--

Africa, my Africa. Whatever will happen to you? Or has it already happened?

If a group forbids its children to marry outside of that group, are they not approaching Eugenics?

The war on soft drinks is amusing. The obese teenagers are but a horror.

Obama is imperfect. Romney is empty.

I'd lay down my life on the tracks for high speed trains.

The Foolishness of Righteousness, The Problem with Men

All this self righteous talk about grown men having sex with boys.

I am not being glib. It is a crime. It needs to be dealt with, of course. What it does to the victims is horrendous. It’s good that stuff comes to light and it is taken care of.

All true.

But what a waste of time to point at an obvious disaster and say, “You’re so wrong! You’re so wrong! How could you have done that?”

This might make the self righteous feel better, but my question is always, “What on earth does self righteousness actually DO?”

Listen up ladies and parents of twelve year olds:

Men are insane. They are led by their sexual desires. If they were not, there would be no prom dates and no babies. Now, for some awful reason, men tend to LOCK IN on an object of desire at a certain time in their life.  Sometimes it’s girls. Sometimes it’s boys. Sometimes it’s rubber spatulas. Sometimes it’s shoes.  Sometimes, as they grow up, they get stuck on something from an earlier time. I have no idea why. I am simply grateful that I am garden variety grown up gay.

But this is the situation. Why aren’t we figuring out why men get hooked in like this? And why are we not taking down the stories of pedophiles, no matter how repellant, and then use them to figure out how to stop future men from becoming pedophiles, if this is possible?

And ethically, if you can somehow figure out how to figure out how a man goes down this path, maybe you can stop it?

I don’t know.

And then, if you could… would you then try to control other forms of sexuality?

It’s so tricky. 

But let’s get back to the real problem here.  This must be stopped and men are wired the way they are wired and somehow this all gets horribly screwed up and someone has to get on top of this problem. Yelling that it’s wrong is like saying fire is hot.

What about figuring out how this happens?  And then trying to ameliorate?

Or is it just too much fucking fun to have your crimes and your self righteous horror reactions to it?

People. Come on. You’re smarter than this.

Assuming that people are all normal and everything is going to be okay is naïve.  This world is not safe for your children. Scream all you want, I guess. But get scientific and solve your troubles. Please.

Call me a totalitarian (but the Socialist kind), but there is a way to manage society. Pay attention. Take notes. Find trends. Change the path.

In the meantime, Good luck.

Thank You, New York Times (Again and Again)

EDITORIAL

The Defense of Marriage Act, Exposed

Published: June 10, 2012

A federal district judge in New York ruled last week that the Defense of Marriage Act violates the Constitution by requiring the plaintiff to pay federal estate tax on her same-sex spouse’s estate, even though opposite-sex spouses are exempt. It follows a string of other rulings striking down the law in a federal appeals court, two federal district courts and a bankruptcy court.

With the Obama administration’s decision in 2011 not to defend the law, that task has been taken up with relish by the Republicans in Congress. Last week in California, their lawyers filed a brief in the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit challenging a district court ruling that the law violates the Constitution by denying health benefits to the same-sex spouse of a federal lawyer.

The brief makes the claim that the law’s goals are to maintain consistency in allocating federal benefits and encourage relationships “that most frequently result in the begetting and raising of children.” But in fact, the law thwarts consistency by accepting some state definitions of marriage and rejecting others. And the Republicans offer no real evidence that expanding the definition of marriage to include same-sex spouses affects the ability of opposite-sex couples to marry or have children.

The federal courts that have reviewed this law since 2010 have found that it fails to meet the most elementary test of constitutionality. Under this “rational basis” test, a statute will be upheld — even when groups are treated differently — if the law has some reasonable relationship to a legitimate government purpose.

The Republican brief says the statute “merely reaffirmed what Congress has always meant” when it refers to marriage: “a traditional male-female couple.” The federal trial court in California explained, however, that “tradition, standing alone, does not provide a rational basis for the law.”

The court also cogently argued that the act should be subject to a higher standard of scrutiny because it discriminates on the basis of sexual orientation. But even under the most forgiving standard, the Defense of Marriage Act clearly violates equal protection.

Editing Box

http://boxthemovie.wordpress.com/2012/06/11/box-editing-to-the-finish-2/

Financial Planning

Today, while sitting across from a financial planner who was trying to sell us some sort of instrument, projecting 18 years into our future, I got this funny feeling that went something like this: “I hate you.”

Something about turning the rest of my life into an action that is going to fill the columns of an excel sheet is not exactly what I had in mind.

Why can’t old people just live in one little room with young people under the same roof? Wouldn’t that be the easiest way to go? Then everyone wouldn’t have to have millions in order to be so independent in the gray years.

If everyone needs fewer millions, we could shrink the efforts of the working years, burn less fuel, and attend fewer wars in order to grab every damn thing we can so that we can each live alone in our own castles as we hurtle toward death.

I do not mind so much the idea of having less money when I am older. I do not like the idea of being alone when I am ancient.  So why not marry the two?

My financial plan?  Increase income, decrease expenses. Save as much as you can. Eat your vegetables. Good fucking luck.

Box at Cinegear

http://boxthemovie.wordpress.com/2012/06/07/cinegear/

Hungarians Speaking Chinese

The Common Good might be for everyone to be free to compete and grab as much as they can as their might and cleverness allows…

But this annoying wall between PC’s and Macs simply must stop.

I know, I know---I’m a philistine for pounding my hairy paws hard on the right click button of the mouse for my pc.  The Macs are sleeker. The whole experience a sort of gated community for sound and vision epicureans.   But I’m no high end aesthete, or am I? Not really. Kind of. But hell…I like it easy and cheap, too.

I was a mac fiend for many years.  But during the OS 9 into OS X era, when they partitioned between the two operating systems, I felt annoyingly bifurcated. I believe in LookBacks, forever. Plus, I had a lemon iMac that needed constant patching. It did not work well with my peripherals (or with my profiteroles) no matter how much gum and duct tape I applied.  So I walked (with the chiding of my easily-moseying-along-PC-clad- not-yet-husband).  I walked away from mac about ten or eleven years ago…  

Of course, it followed me everywhere. At jobs. As iPhones. I just shot this movie and you pretty much have to have a mac in post.  And I mean it. One needs all those QuickTime files to speak intelligently to the editor, composer, sound mixer, Jesus.

So this is what I did. I need to have my dailies easily accessible for constant viewing. But the official external hard drive is mac formatted, naturally, and large and precious and cannot be flying around and certainly cannot be plugged into a PC for fear of being completely reformatted. I bought a Seagate GoFlex that prides itself on being able to be read by Macs and PC’s.  One does stand in the aisles of Best Buy and one often mutters, “Yeah, right.”

But I had to give it a shot.  A 1 Terabite drive for 100 bucks that can be read by both formats?  YES!  Give me it!  Problems solved for maybe an eternity.

Home. Excitement. Plug and play you say?  No such luck.

The mac (my cousin/God Son is here with his mac, so we are rolling with that)---continued to see the Seagate as a read only. So you couldn’t write to it. Then, often, the hard drive wouldn’t mount---meaning, an icon for it would not show up. Though, if you went deep into utilities, you did see that it was there. Unplugging and plugging it in sometimes would pull up an icon. Using disk repair in utilities rendered it useful on the mac, but not on the pc. War!

After much reformatting…wiping it out, reloading the software onto the mac (its default really is PC), reloading the factory software onto the external drive, rinse, repeat, plug and plug again…until somehow, magically, both computers can read the drive…I was able to start my copying.

And it is working.

But there is no way of knowing why it didn’t work right away. There is the pain of the two systems attacking each other. And then, there’s the middle pain of the Seagate who promises so much, an easy bi-platform world—that totally did not work and had to be tinkered into reality to match what it advertised. Fuck Seagate and its lying boxes.

Blech.

I think the future is in buying a Mac and having it run windows, too.  This way, you get it all. (You can run windows on a mac. PC’s won’t run Mac OS at all.)

How are we feeling about a Chrome Operating system?   I might be all for it.  Blow up the dreaded PC/Mac war that has been going on forever. Haven’t we experienced enough of those two little ego-boys and their personal war?

It's Fleet Week and Boy are My Eyes Tired

Fleet week brings a certain flutter to NYC. It always has. No one thinks of war. They just stare and sigh. In my case, I also can't believe the small waist lines. I remember having that sort of thing.

Uniforms are sexy. I guess because they remove personality and showcase simplicity. One can project almost anything onto a form that stands in uniform.

It also feels very old fashioned. This tradition of sailors coming to NYC for much needed R&R on the shores of Manhattan.

My brother was a sailor. On a destroyer. He would have to announce to any visitors, "I cannot confirm or deny there are nuclear weapons on this ship."  Something like that.  Which meant, of course, that there were plenty.

War is ugly. Young men in uniform are not.

Mosaic with Husband, Baltimore Museum, 2012

Mosaics with Husband, Baltimore, 2012

Baltimore says COME on DOWN!

It is a lucky life when trains become your main mode of transportation.

Movies are Time Consuming

Strangely, I have not been blogging much.

This is exciting because I have been pretty steady with it for seven years and what this means is, other things are getting big enough to eclipse this rolling rave.

Time does fly when you’re blogging fun.

I have always had a premonition that when things got super busy creatively in other areas that the blog would suffer.

And so it has.

Not to mention—blogging is starting to feel so earth shoes and puca beads historical.

(For you young readers…that was even before the height of Donna Summer’s career.)

Maybe what will infuse new energy into the blog will be some curious new way of looking at things.

I’ll keep you posted.

Plays and movies and books to be birthed or buried. But Blogs, they are eternal. That’s the beauty of them. Oh Open Trench…you’re a pal.

I Have Fallen in Love Once Again...

With Sfogliatelle

The Dailies are In!

http://boxthemovie.wordpress.com/2012/05/18/sound-and-picture-are-synced-2/

Highland Falls: A true Story

http://boxthemovie.wordpress.com/2012/05/17/a-true-story-from-the-owner-of-our-highland-falls-ny-location-on-may-5/

Box: The Professional Stills

http://boxthemovie.wordpress.com/2012/05/15/box-the-professional-stills/

Offa Box and Onto Obama

I have stories to tell about the making of BOX…but right now, there is this---

Obama, we applaud you for coming out. Thank you. Will it help your campaign?

One wonders.  (Wim Wenders.)

Box: Three Days of Stills and a Wrap

http://boxthemovie.wordpress.com/2012/05/06/box-shots-day-1-57/ 

http://boxthemovie.wordpress.com/2012/05/07/box-shots-day-2-86/ 

http://boxthemovie.wordpress.com/2012/05/09/box-shots-day-3-and-a-wrap/

Box Pics 1 & 2

2 Days Shot
1 to Go
Heading North.
http://boxthemovie.wordpress.com/2012/05/06/box-shots-day-1-57/
http://boxthemovie.wordpress.com/2012/05/07/box-shots-day-2-86/

8 Hours Left...and Sony Tweets

8 Hours left www.indiegogo.com/box
And Sony is Tweeting:
Sony Super 35mm Facebook: http://on.fb.me/JuO9On
Sony Pro USA Facebook: http://on.fb.me/KZEa9K
Sony Pro USA Google+: http://bit.ly/J00ifF

One Last Chance

http://boxthemovie.wordpress.com/2012/05/03/less-than-twenty-four-hours-2/

(Or Maybe they'll be more...)    Wink.

Our Sony F65 Camera

http://boxthemovie.wordpress.com/2012/05/01/our-camera-the-sony-f65-will-shoot-box/

BOX: FOUR DAYS LEFT

http://www.indiegogo.com/box

http://boxthemovie.wordpress.com/2012/04/28/box-the-cast-7/

BOX Principal Photography Begins on FRIDAY!

www.indiegogo.com/box

Hello great friends,

Keeping you updated and also, this is our last plea for the final truth:

Principal photography begins on Friday and this movie is going to cost $25,000.

We have little time left to raise cash on IndieGoGo, so this is what we are suggesting to everyone we’ve been badgering, requesting from, looking deep into their eyes and wallets:

GIVE

and/or  

POST THIS LINK anywhere you can:  www.indiegogo.com/box

and then/or

Never read another one of my blog posts again?

Going to raise 9,000 more American greenbacks before Wednesday.

We can do it. (Or we can go get jobs at Chase Manhattan Bank--)

So here we are. Humbly asking you.  One little more time.  Give, Post, Block, Repeat.

www.indiegogo.com/box

__________________________________________________________

And now, The BOX NEWS:

First of all, the little town of Highland Falls has gotten into the movie madness and they are going to put on their parking meter socks so we can have a load of free street parking at our warehouse.

It’s cute there.

But even better, we have an amazing cast for BOX and here they are: 

Marsha Dietlein Bennett, Dylan Chalfy, Lou Liberatore, Mink Stole and Alfred Damm

See the wonderful faces of these great talents, here:

http://boxthemovie.wordpress.com/2012/04/28/box-the-cast-7/

_________________________________________________________________

134 of you, to be exact, have already donated to the making of BOX, along with our Corporate Angel, SONY. We are so grateful.  Thank you so much!

And now for Camera news:

With much aid from our extremely talented Director of photography, we have acquired the use of the SONY F65 camera! Along with a camera package (lenses, etc.), that requires a truck to haul the many cases. Our DP is so respected and admired that she and Sony have partnered and Sony will be using footage from BOX to promote this camera, along with making a behind-the-scenes movie of the making-of-the-movie. We are one of the earliest short films to be given this opportunity. Mr. M. Night Shyamalan is shooting his current feature film on the Sony F65 right now. Increased depth of field and many new features will make the Sony F65 the industry standard for digital movie making. (Until something else comes along, one imagines…)

http://pro.sony.com/bbsc/ssr/show-highend/resource.solutions.bbsccms-assets-show-highend-F65.shtml

This movie got kinda buzzy and we could not scrimp on staff nor design…and we are not. The top notch crew is working for peanuts. But those allergens add up…25,000 dollars worth of them to be exact.

www.indiegogo.com/box

  

Our Story

BOX is a short film about people craving intimacy. How they suffer when intimacy is lost. How they succeed when they live inside of it. And how, possibly, the ones who are good at it can help the ones who are not so good.

Zak and Paula are married but they barely understand each other.  Zak has an appointment with Peter, a man in a gender neutral outfit, who attempts to help him.

Helen works with Peter to help Zak find his way and lends her special magic to all she encounters. Will Helen and Peter’s simple gift of a Box  reveal a new way forward for Paula? Maybe…

All in eleven minutes at three locations. (A kitchen, a warehouse and a beautiful Seventeenth Century Dutch Stone Farmhouse on Five Acres with a pond and gardens.)

www.indiegogo.com/box

A shout of gratitude to Mink Stole of John Waters fame and Lou Liberatore from the original Broadway cast of Burn This who are playing Helen and Peter. To our leads, Marsha Dietlein Bennett and Dylan Chalfy, who are playing Paula and Zak, a wildly talented pair. To extremely talented newcomer, Andreas Damm. To Jendra Jarnagin, our wonderful Director of Photography, Sony darling, whose work can be seen in the above video. Chrissy Conant, installation artist and painter, will be our production designer. Micah Bloomberg, the fantastic Indie Film Sound King (Frozen River, Martha Marcy May Marlene) has joined our crew. Mark Repasky, editor at large at Showtime, will pull it all together in post. As Associate Producer, Rebecca Israel is going to keep us all on track the days of the shoot, the first week of May along with Co-Producer Matthew Weiner and Assistant Director, Darren Bartlett.  And, you! We want you to be a part of this process.

This budget will cover:

Five Actors

CoProducer

Associate Producer

Assistant Director

Director of Photography

First Assistant Camera

Second Assistant Camera

Sound

Gaffer (lights)

Grip (muscle)

Swing (Gaffer and Grip helper)

3 PA’s

Production Designer

Two Set Dressers/Props

Wardrobe

Casting Director

Rental space for Casting

Sets-Props

Hair-Makeup

Script Supervisor

D.I.T. (Digital management)

Hard Drives

Transportation (Passenger Van, Cube truck)

Steadicam

Equipment rental

Food

Editor

Sound Mixer

Insurance

DVD copies

And SOME festival fees 

(Feel free to use this list to make your own movie!)

Everyone involved is a full career level professional who is joining this project based on the script and on us.

Movies can’t make themselves. Come in. Get Close. Open your Box.

May you have everything you desire.

Thanks,

Chris and Don

CONTRIBUTE HERE:

www.indiegogo.com/box

or POST this Link:

www.indiegogo.com/box

www.indiegogo.com/box

www.boxthemovie.wordpress.com

www.facebook.com/boxthemovie

www.twitter.com/boxthemovie

ANDREAS DAMM JOINS BOX

http://boxthemovie.wordpress.com/2012/04/27/welcome-andreas-damm-as-alfred-in-box-4/

WHO is IN the BOX?

To Mink Stole and Lou Liberatore, just add:

http://boxthemovie.wordpress.com/2012/04/24/dylan-chalfy-stars-in-box/

http://boxthemovie.wordpress.com/2012/04/25/marsha-dietlein-bennett-stars-in-box/

And one kid, almost chosen,

And you have the CAST of BOX.

Ten Days Left---I know, I know. Dig Deep BOX

http://boxthemovie.wordpress.com/2012/04/17/last-call-heading-toward-19k-free-state-of-the-art-sony-camera/

SIZE MATTERS

Check out this link.

I knew we were all living on the quantum foam---I just didn't realize how small it was.

Get down to it!

The Scale of the Universe

And then go in the opposite direction.

Who needs marijuana after something like this?

Physics. Poetry. Your days before the birth canal. Your nights of worry.

Eh.

The Scale of the Universe

Friends: We're getting there. Jump on. Contribute. Link. Help. FREE NEW SONY CAM!

www.indiegogo.com/box 

Hello great friends,

So many of you have been so generous, it is rather ridiculous. THANK YOU! 113 of you, to be exact, have donated to the making of Box, along with our Corporate Angel, SONY. We are so grateful.

OUR COSTS have ballooned to 19K because of some great news. We have acquired from Sony the use of the SONY F65 camera! And a camera package (lenses, etc.). It’s kinda nuts-lucky. Our Director of Photography is so respected and admired, that she and Sony have partnered and Sony will be using footage from BOX to promote this camera. We are one of the earliest short films to be given this opportunity. Mr. M. Night Shyamalan is shooting his current feature film on the Sony F65 right now. Increased depth of field and many new features will make the Sony F65 the industry standard for digital movie making. (Until something else comes along, one imagines…)

http://pro.sony.com/bbsc/ssr/show-highend/resource.solutions.bbsccms-assets-show-highend-F65.shtml

So, we can’t scrimp on staff and design…and we are not. The crew is top notch and everyone is working for peanuts. But those allergens add up…and it has become clear, with our actualized budget, that we need 19,000 dollars worth of those peanuts. 

We are two weeks away from closing out this successful campaign, but we still need help getting there.

Many of you have contributed already. So thank you again! Perhaps you would consider forwarding this email to a few fun friends or post this link on one of your many cool social sites:

www.indiegogo.com/box

Or send another five bucks.

Some of you are feeling the pinch of these silly economic times…and we totally get it and we thank you for being so positive and supportive in your enthusiasm for our movie. Would you please post this link on one of your many cool social sites?

www.indiegogo.com/box

And those of you who have considered contributing but have not gotten around to it yet, please jump on and push us toward that 19K mark. We need you!

Is this link getting repetitive? :

www.indiegogo.com/box

Our Story

BOX is a short film about people craving intimacy. How they suffer when intimacy is lost. How they succeed when they live inside of it. And how, possibly, the ones who are good at it can help the ones who are not so good.

Zak and Paula are married but they barely understand each other.  Zak has an appointment with Peter, a man in a gender neutral outfit, who attempts to help him.

Helen works with Peter to help Zak find his way and lends her special magic to all she encounters. Will Helen and Peter’s simple gift of a Box  reveal a new way forward for Paula? Maybe…

All in eleven minutes at three locations. (A kitchen, a warehouse and a beautiful Seventeenth Century Dutch Stone Farmhouse on Five Acres with a pond and gardens.)

What We Need & What You Get

OUR GOAL

 is to shoot this movie with great artistic integrity. To that end, we are surrounding ourselves with professional talent of the highest caliber, from actors to the director of photography. To pay everyone, down to the newest PA who has just arrived in town. To submit to festivals. And to develop and produce more films with intelligence and sensitivity.

Short movies do not get made by studios. They get made by people like you. By people like us. We need your help. 

We have a full crew and the beginnings of a great cast. A shout of gratitude to Mink Stole of John Waters fame and Lou Liberatore from the original Broadway cast of Burn This (with John Malkovich and Joan Allen), who are playing Helen and Peter. To Cindi Rush, casting director, who is working on offers to name talent for Zak and Paula. To Jendra Jarnagin, our wonderful Director of Photography, Sony darling, whose work can be seen in the above video. Chrissy Conant, installation artist and painter, will be our production designer. Micah Bloomberg, the fantastic Indie Film Sound King (Frozen River, Martha Marcy May Marlene) has joined our crew. Mark Repasky, editor at large at Showtime, will pull it all together in post. As Associate Producer, Rebecca Israel is going to keep us all on track the days of the shoot, the first week of May. And, you! We want you to be a part of this process.

This budget will cover:

Five Actors

Associate Producer

Assistant Director

Director of Photography

First Assistant Camera

Second Assistant Camera

Sound

Gaffer (lights)

Grip (muscle)

Swing (Gaffer and Grip helper)

2 PA’s

Production Designer

Set Dresser and Props

Wardrobe

Casting Director

Rental space for Casting

Sets-Props

Hair-Makeup

Script Supervisor

D.I.T. (Digital management)

Hard Drives

Transportation (Passenger Van, Cube truck)

Steadicam

Equipment rental

Food

Editor

Sound Mixer

Insurance

DVD copies

And SOME festival fees 

(Feel free to use this list to make your own movie!)

Everyone involved is a full career level professional who is joining this project based on the script and on us. Your money will be stretched, paying 1970s fees (the golden age of cinema) for a present day movie.

Movies can’t make themselves. Come in. Get Close. Open your Box.

May you have everything you desire.

Thanks,

Chris and Don

CONTRIBUTE HERE:

www.indiegogo.com/box

or POST this Link:

www.indiegogo.com/box

www.boxthemovie.wordpress.com

www.facebook.com/boxthemovie

www.twitter.com/boxthemovie

Funny Pages: Park Slope, Thursday Night. Another Great Reason to Visit Brooklyn

 Thursday April 19, 2012, 8PM

Brooklyn Reading Works presents 

Funny Pages 

A Night of Humor

Curated by Marian Fontana

At the Old Stone House                                             

Author Marian Fontana knows funny and she is bringing together a great group of comic writers for this night of hilarity with Don Cummings, Blair Fell, Ellen Ferguson, Billy Frolick, Gianna Messina & Marian Fontana

 . 

BIOS OF THE PERFORMERS:

DON CUMMINGS' critically acclaimed plays have been produced on both coasts: His play, The Fat of the Land was a semifinalist for the Kaufman & Hart Award for new American comedy. A Good Smoke was a semifinalist for the Eugene O'Neill theater conference. It had a reading at The Public Theater in New York starring Meryl Streep and Debra Monk and has been optioned for Broadway. Piss Play is about Minorities so it's Really Important was produced in the Summer Cringe Festival of 2009 where it received the Golden Pineapple award for best play. His latest play, Live Work Space, opens soon in Los Angeles. His collection of nonfiction essays are loosely held together in his yet-to-be-published memoir, Open Trench, named after his blog. He has acted in a lot of plays and been on a lot of sitcoms and writes movies and TV shows. Mr. Cummings is a graduate of Tufts University, The Neighborhood Playhouse and a member of The Dramatists Guild and the Ensemble Studio Theater Writer's Unit.   www.doncummings.net

I WILL BE READING  "The Front Row"---a story about choosing the wrong best friends out of convenience.


BLAIR FELL has written for the television series Queer As Folk, and the emmy-award winning Public Television show California Connected. His plays Naked Will, The Tragic and Horrible Life of the Singing Nun, From The Hip, Bargains and Blood, The Ballad of Little Girl Jesus et al have been performed around the world and have received numerous
awards.  He has written charity and award show speeches for hundreds of celebrities, as well as the GLAAD Awards, Vimeo Awards and The Trevor Project.  Along with writing for a number of pop culture websites, he writes a fiction blog called subwaysaints.com and the web series Burninghabits.com. His work can also be seen on blairfell.com.

ELLEN FERGUSON writes the "Diversity in the News" column for McSweeney's, and her nonfiction has also been published in Diversity Prep, Publisher's Weekly, and SPY.  Her McSweeney's column has been widely reprinted online.  Her poetry can be found online on identitytheory and the Brooklyn Reading Works, and in print in Long Island Quarterly.  Before she started teaching English, Satire and Nonfiction in New Jersey and New Hampshire, she worked at The New Yorker Magazine and SPY.

MARIAN FONTANA has been a writer and performer for over 20 years. Her articles have appeared in The New Yorker, Vanity Fair and most recently in the Guardian and on  Salon.com. Her memoir, A Widows Walk published in 2005 by Simon and Schuster, was chosen as the Top Ten Great Reads of 2005 by People magazine and the Washington Post's Book Raves of 2005. She most recently completedher second memoir, The Middle of the Bed.   Her essays have appeared in the anthologies Money Changes Everything and The Time of My Life for Random House. She is currently collaborating on a musical.

BILLY FROLICK'S screenwriting credits include DreamWorks Animation's MADAGASCAR.  He has written for The New Yorker, The Los Angeles Times and Salon.com, and is the author of four book-length parodies, including The Ditches of Edison County, a national bestseller.

GIANNA MESSINA is a writer, producer and comedian who got her start as a baby model. Her work has appeared in  Dossier and Atlanta Style & Design magazine. She has performed stand-up at the Punchline in Atlanta and at the Metropolitan Room in New York and co-hosted the No Rules radio show with comedian Stu Levine. She is a graduate of Syracuse University Crouse College of Art and the High School for the Performing Arts where she majored in Drama. Gianna lives with her cat Clementine in Brooklyn in order to be closer to good bread and cannoli. She is gluten-free intolerant, enjoys the 3rdperson format of biographies and blogging on giannamessina.com.

 EXPERIENCE Brooklyn Reading Works, the reading series that has been called "The best place to chase fiction with a bit of history" by Conde Nast Traveler.  "Once a month you can hear writers discuss themes ranging from "Make Mine a Double" - on women and  drinking -  to books by war veterans." 

BRW is a great night out for anyone who wants to be entertained and enlightened by acclaimed and emerging authors, and meet others who enjoy the same. 

A $5 donation includes refreshments and wine. 

The Old Stone House

336 Third Street

Between Fifth and Fourth Avenues

Park Slope, Brooklyn NY  11215

Due to construction in the park, enter from the Fourth Avenue side of the house. 

Seminar

Seminar, the play by Theresa Rebeck, that I finally went to see---is trite but well acted and funny at times.

It is both a screed against the vanity of writers and a celebration of their spirit.

There is not much going on in this play. But I do like the use of language.

A choice was made to not hear any of the writing being talked about. Too bad. So much could have been written on the written-but-never-read pages that would have revealed character.

I think this play wants to be profound. However, it has the soul of a sitcom.

On the other hand, it is intelligent enough to be better than a lot of other things we are forced to sit through in midtown.

Jeff Goldblum is good. So are Jerry O’Connell, Justin Long, Zoe Lister-Jones and Hettienne Park.

Sam Gold directs it very clearly and very well.

Scene transitions were weak. Not dark enough and the actors were not still enough for the comic quick lights up bumps to work.

In the end, there is a happy ending.  Too bad. It gets so soft, one realizes there was nothing hard there to begin with, even though it pretended to be so.

A bunny in tarantula’s clothing.

Of course, I’m jealous. But isn’t the root of all criticism competition?

I want to sauerkraut wrestle with Theresa Rebeck. But I’d let her win. Because she’s a girl.  (I think she’d get this joke…)