131 days...

as of the time of this post, there are one hundred and thirty one (131) days left to come visit me in los angeles. 131 days left to come see the beverly bungalow, where at some point before those 131 days are up an apartment "cooling" party will be thrown - probably end of january. i walk through the streets of the neighborhood, look around on my drive home and think that although i may return, soon all of this will just be a memory.

131 days

SKIPPY went HIPPIE!!!

A guy can live 28 years, plotting along with the knowledge that at least a few things in his life will remain constant. The sun will come up, you can have too much of a good thing (i.e. whiskey), 90% of the people that work in Hollywood are completely nuts, and for me Skippy Super Chunk Peanut Butter is the peanut butter staple in my life. Sure, there are other kinds of peanut butter: gourmet peanut butter, natural peanut butter, vegan peanut butter, creamy, chunky...but I had settled in with Skippy Super Chunk. It was what I grew up on, what I built my foundation on, the peanut butter I had come to know and trust. I even occasionally bought it in the big tubs!

This morning when I walked into the kitchen here at our production office to make myself some peanut butter toast for breakfast I saw something that made my mouth drop. Skippy had gone hippie! All natural, Skippy brand Super Chunk peanut butter!!! In my days I had tried other brands, other kinds, I tried to learn to enjoy the kinds that I knew were better for me but I always returned to the Skippy SC, but this could change everything. Is it possible that I could continue to eat my favorite brand and ALSO eat more healthy?! But would it pass the taste test...

I sat down with my two pieces of wheat bread smothered in the new brand of PB, a tall paper cup of OJ flanking it's back side. I waited for a moment, completely aware of the momentous journey that I was about to embark upon. I picked up the first slice and after a deep breath I bit down.

Nothing.

Really, nothing. No difference. I couldn't tell that I was eating more healthy, it tasted the same! In my mind I was consuming my same peanut butter, but somewhere deep inside my body I was not adding oil to my system.

Change of job, change of city, things that would be considered huge for most people but for me - Change of Peanut butter! this could really be huge.

The end of the firsts

Have you ever sat down to write a letter, or e-mail (or blog entry) that you want to have some meaning, or that you want to sound well thought out and intelligently written yet can't get it started? You take a stab and quickly back pedal, followed by another attempt that is probably dismissed and erased due to it's cliche sounding nature. You look at a blank page again, or a growing pile of scribbled and crumpled up paper (if you're old school) and find yourself further from knowing how to begin that you were when you began. So you finally give in and just go for train-of-thought writing, hoping you'll be able to segway into your original thought gracefully without anyone ever noticing it was all just a distraction to buy time?

In the unofficial, non-existent yet often referenced book "What to do After you have a Death in the Immediate Family" it says, "Don't do anything drastic, or make any major decisions in the first year." The first year, what is supposed to be enough time to mourn, reflect, adjust, and begin the process of getting to "the new normal." Once that first year has come and gone, every milestone has been passed and every first has happened: first Christmas, first birthday, first generic Hallmark holiday, first anniversary of the first day of the Year of Firsts. Those first 12 months are said to be some of the most difficult, and once they have passed it's supposed to begin getting easier.

This Thursday, my year of firsts will come to an end. From this point on there will be no more scripted uncharted territory. The concerned gaze will lighten on the big holidays and milestone days, and life this side of that day will start to become standard rather than difficult and different.

At least this is what is said in the guide book.

I believe it for the most part, as a noticeable weight was lifted this past Friday when we successfully passed the first Thanksgiving, but as a friend said to me, it's awfully bold to believe that everything gets easy now. Even when the years this side of my mother's death outnumber those counted while she was alive, I don't think it will ever become completely normal nor easy. There are still many more unknown firsts that lie ahead and even a few that are known but not scheduled. But, something did change after this past weekend and changed for the better. I felt grounded and calmed, and ready to start making some of those decisions that I was supposed to stay away from in the first year (more on those in posts yet to come.)

I don't think the first year really has any magical healing powers, rather it's just another milestone said to signify the end of counting milestones. Whatever it is, it will soon have come and gone and I'll find myself on the other side of the year of firsts. A side I think I'll be very happy to be on.

Who would you cast?

Production Office procrastination 101:

Walk up to a co-worker, preferably one that enjoys going to the movies and ask said person: If they were making a live action Smurfs movie, who would you cast as Gargamel? Then, after that - what about Papa Smurf, Smurfette and Brainy Smurf? Guaranteed to keep you from working for at least 10 - 15 minutes.

"My Cancer" on the radio

I woke up this morning to the monotonous soothing tones of NPR, in my mind no better way to wake up. Even if you just lay there ignoring it for a while, you're quietly seeping up news and knowledge of the day without even having to get out of bed.

ANYWAY, there was commentary that came on called "My Cancer" that is done by a man named Leroy Sievers. A Peabody and Emmy award winning journalist, Sievers has traded covering foreign wars to covering a personal war, his bout with cancer.

In my opinion, it's a very brave and wonderfully written blog, and mostly it's very human. It's not trying to be inspiring, or overly spiritual - it's honest and human.

I've included the link to it on the right of this page - give it a read if you like.

Happy Thanksgiving....

Robert Altman - (Feb 20, 1925 - Nov. 20, 2006)

[after watching The Bicycle Thief]
Griffin Mill: Great movie, huh? So refreshing to see something like this after all these... cop movies and, you know, things we do. Maybe we'll do a remake of this!

- The Player
(Directed by Robert Altman, one of the most non-Hollywood directors Hollywood has ever seen)

Finally, A Thanksgiving song....

In less than a week from today, it will officially become socially okay to play Holiday music. Although some department stores and assorted "lite" radio across the country start a little earlier each year, Friday is when all bets are off and we're subjected to those cheery songs for the next 5 weeks (nonstop and in every room in the house if you're my dear sister Nif)

ANYWAY, I stumbled across a song a few weeks ago and I wanted to share it. It's a holiday song, but not that holiday - it's a Thanksgiving song! Now honestly, how many Thanksgiving songs do you know? Me neither, so I thought it was necessary to give this song a chance and give Thanksgiving the lyrical credit it deserves.

So here is my Thanksgiving Day gift to you. THANKSGIVING DAY (5MB)

p.s. it's from the former lead singer of The Kinks

p.p.s. yes, it's a bit on the cheesy side but it was originally released as a benefit EP so I guess that gives it a little leeway.

Only in LA

I'm normally a stairs guy when I can be, which is why last night was the first time I saw this when I got into the elevator in the parking garage here at the lot.



You have the Fire Dept call button, the Call Cancel button, and the Earthquake button!

I really don't know what happens when you push it, but if I was an elevator designer I'll tell you what I'd have it do: Right after you push the button I'd have it pump the elevator full of nitrous gas, as I think that is the only thing that would comfort me if I was in an elevator when an earthquake hit.

...in the mean time, I think I'll stick with the stairs.

Zuzu's peddals brought to you by 1800-FLOWERS

A high school in Arden Hills, MN has decided to sell advertisements during their production of "It's a Wonderful Life" this year. Faced with budgets that can't support their performance, and not having a booster club like the football team, the theater group decided to sell ad's that will be voiced by the students during the production, as their adaptation tells the story through a radio show broadcast. Personally, I hate the commercialization that they have had to resort to, but more hate the fact that they had to resort to it in the first place. Much like the little bands providing commercials with soundtracks, sometimes you have to do whatever it take to get the money you need to keep your project alive.

Read the full story here...and make sure to click on the advertisers.

don't go away mad, just go away

Saturday evening I drove to the far reaches of Burbank and loaded into a mini-van to attend the Motley Crue / Aerosmith concert on the far east end of LA...here were some of the high points to the concert:

• Motley Crue sounds terrible, and when Vince is singing - he only sings every 3rd word. They also completely back lit their stage so that you can't see the faces of the band members. Truthfully, from the front of the lawn where we were it could have been four guys that they picked up in Riverside up on stage.
  
• Tommy Lee has become more of a front man than Vince Neil is. Tommy's success due to his reality show, and his home videos has propelled him to the biggest name in that band. However, name recognition doesn't equal brains as he shouted "how are you doin San Diego?" and the concert wasn't in San Diego.
• Apparently, burning a vinyl jacket to keep warm is good for both drunk concert goers AND the security guards sent to put the fire out. After some of the former party started a jacket on fire, the security guard who showed up to extinguish the fire seemed more interested in getting close to warm himself than in putting it out.
  
• Stephen Tyler must have steel vocal chords because there is no way his voice could hold up any other way. Seriously, the man can still belt out the scream in "Dream On" like he could 20 years ago (or so i'm told by the drunk lady behind me)
• Aerosmith can still put on a great show, both in sound and visuals and are worth the price of the ticket by themselves.
  

Sell outs, or do indy bands just love beef?

Sitting here tonight watching the new Monday night football game, Sunday night football - I had a revelation after a series of commercials came across the idiot box (which, if it's no longer shaped as a box, but instead flat and hangs on your wall, what should it be called now...the idiot picture, the idiot screen....and it used to be called the boob tube but my tv no longer has tubes in it, rather LCD's...so i guess i can no longer call it the boob tube either...sigh. These are the thoughts that plague me at the end of my weekends.)

HOWEVER, back to my revelation, an Outback Steakhouse ad came on and the song they were using sounded very familiar. It only took me a moment to realize it was "Of Montreal" singing a altered version of their song "Wraith Pinned to the Mist (And Other Games)" The knee jerk reaction was to say "wow, look at the little indy band selling out" but then I remembered an e-mail I received earlier talking about one of my favorite bands "The Old 97's" and how they had done the same thing for a Chili's commercial, singing about baby back baby back baby back ribs.

Chilis

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So in the matter of just a few days, two great little indy bands that i know of were selling beef. Ken Bathe said of the money recieved from the commerical, and previous commericals and commerical usage of their songs "It's a good thing; just ask someone without it." Full interview here. Kevin Barnes, the lead singer for Of Montreal said that he was going to put the money gained from the commercial back into the band's shows. "The good versus Sell Out is at about 80-20," he said and it's worth it if it will improve the bands shows. His full interview is here.

So I guess it just goes to show that smaller independent bands just don't make enough money sometimes to support their shows, their families, or even themselves. And so they are allowed to venture into the world of capitalization and commercialization to act as a subsidy to their income. ...or they're money hungry sell-out's. ...or I suppose that maybe indy bands just like beef.

pretty much says it all....

little, ritz, different?

while sitting here hitting the refresh button on my browser to see what kind of a mood i'm going to be in tomorrow a bit of hunger washed over me.

Walking back to the kitchen i found some Ritz with peanut butter, and some mini Ritz with peanut butter. However, though in theory the smaller Ritz should taste the same as the larger ones, as if they were Wonkavisioned across the room (remember those little color dots "millions of tiny pieces" that would just float up near the ceiling like smoke before going down to the Wonka-vision set) anyway...they taste different. This reminded me of the difference between Pizza Pockets and Pizza rolls. Same company, same flavor, similar box - completely different taste.

Is this a flaw in the process? Is this done on purpose so that two products that should be the same except in size will appeal to different people? Or is it some cosmic flaw that they're just hoping no one will notice?

First Star Wars, now this...

George Lucas has apparently squashed any chance of reedeming himself after the debauchle of the Star Wars prequals. In an interview with Frank Darabont, who was writing the newest script, the reason Indy 4 will never get made is all because of George:

“Lucas read it and said, ‘Yeah, I don’t think so, I don’t like it.’ And then he resets it to zero when Spielberg is ready to shoot it that coming year, [which] is a real kick to the nuts. You can only waste so much time and so many years of your life on experiences like that, you can only get so emotionally invested and have the rug pulled out from under you before you say enough of that.”

Read the rest of the interview here...sigh so depressing.

This just got me very excited

this is a paragraph from a Swiss newspaper talking about the state of the United States lately, with reference to today's election....and this part just made me so anxious, excited and hopefull about the election.

In any event, both of America's Congressional chambers are within an ace of a turning out the majority. In other words, George Bush could from now be obliged to govern by compromise. This is a nightmare for a President who for the last six years had plenty of elbow room. His father, former president George H.W. Bush, doesn't deny it: he'd rather "not think about his son's life" in the event of a Democrat wave.

Because for example, it would no longer be so easy to place conservative judges on the Supreme Court. Great battles would occur over the program of eavesdropping on Americans, and there would be hearings on energy, environmental and health policies. Let's not even mention the tax breaks for oil companies. Democrats could stop bills and - the cherry on the cake – set up boards of inquiry to investigate the scandals surrounding the Bush Administration.

The full article is here.

The Dixie Chicks I never knew... (SEE THIS MOVIE)

I'm not a country music guy, the closest I come is a CD I created a few years ago called "Country Songs that Don't Suck." A selection of country songs that I enjoyed. Partially for their ridiculousness of their lyrics (She Thinks My Tractor's Sexy) and the rest because they're honestly good songs - but this was about as close to country music as I came.

Today I bought the newest Dixie Chick's album, and I bought it in support of the group after seeing the documentary "Shut up and Sing" here in Los Angeles.



Go see this movie, even if you're not a fan of their music it's worth it. It's a great, fantastically done documentary about the state of free speech in our country today, and about what the consequences can be and what it takes to stand by your ideals. I honestly can say I have a new, great respect for the three women in this group and their fight to stay uncompromised.

The real kicker is, this movie is only playing in 8 theatres across the country and NBC is refusing to air ads for it - for all the same reasons this movie got made. People are afraid of speaking out in today's country, even when it comes to supporting 3 people who weren't afraid to.

The real Borat???

Apparently, a few years ago this webpage made it's way around the net. It featured a journalist from Turkey who bears a striking resembelance to the Sasha Boren Cohen character Borat.

"All people know Sacha Baron Cohen imitate only me," Mr Cagri told Wired News via email. "He is stealing my character and giving bad message to USA people." - read the full article here.

Also, here is a mirror to his webpage, see what you think - is this the real Borat?

motorcycle vs. Saab

this is what i just witnessed when leaving my apartment this afternoon on my way to the post office.

the bike doing about 30 hit the back of a Saab that took a left that she shouldn't have taken. The bike basically exploded on impact, not in a ball of fire kind of explosion but in a million pieces kind. The driver was fine, both drivers in fact. Both terribly shaken up, but both fine.

...it was right then that i decided i'm not going to buy a motorcycle, ever.

Make the most of your education, study hard, do your home work, if you don't...

you become the President of the United States of America.