Oh me oh my

I know it's been a while since the last one and I do apologize, but without further ado....here is the much improved redo of episode 4, with a soundtrack by Joe!

Gibbidy Goobida

I've been reading some things that put me first in the mind for murderin', then for pious yellin' but in the end I setteled on something a good deal more constructive and palatable.

Sweat

&

And this is what you get

Then I checked my in box and found some things that restored a little of my faith in rational thought. Thanks Shawn!

Update on the future home of my coke-addled, capitalist corpulence

Yes, so some of you may recall the picture I took and posted right near the end of last year. During one of my weekend ramblings I came across it from a different angle and, camera in hand, discovered to my shock that it is abandoned! This is a beaufitful building right by the Thames at the absolute heart of one of the worlds most famous cities AND YET LOOK AT THIS.
It's boarded up! All the windows were like this too. I don't get it. My wanton dreams of avarice have been dashed against the craggy rocks of incongruity. Oh well! More pictures...
Soho...
Chinatown, where I saw some asiatic individuals who might not have been from China. I was confused, but remained convinced of my own occidental superiority.Olivers Fantasy of Avarice #48b: Getting a custom tailred suit from this particular guild.
And now a bunch of purdy pictures with no particular caption.

Chubbidy Chobbida

I wholeheartedly suggest the reading of Posterchild’s update for today, in particular his remarks in the personal news section, which are about climate change and iconography. Neat stuff!

Also if you like the letter “P”, then you’re in for a never ending thrill ride.

Meanwhile, good gravy have I got to focus. The end result of my getting seriously stuck in the damn near done treatment of Archbrook (damn near done = 90% , if you like numbers) is that all the creativity and energy I was pouring into that is now cascading willy-nilly, getting on the carpet and all over my cereal. I just did a list of personal projects and the shit came to eleven items – each item being a script idea I’m developing, website, painting, series of animated serials… and I mean, let’s not forget that I also devote time/energy to the day to day absurdities. It’s strange how easy it is to let misdirected personal drive lead one into being a jack-off of all trades – something not much more use than those who don’t try to do anything much at all.

Could be worse though, I might have a decision-making tree like this.

Rob, THIS one is for YOU

Rob did a little number the other day which reminded me of an exercise that occurred to me while I was waiting during the intermission between films and bands at that event I covered for CapitalMag in Shoreditch.

Judging by a page in my notebook, I apparently decided that I was currently in a scene (filmic and fashion sense) that I would quite probably use as a setting in some future script. Not wanting to annoy the room by taking a pile of pictures, I set about a list which I titled “ “Indie” filmscreening tropes ”. Well, I can’t say as I saw any of that obnoxiously named “Blave” stuff which has Rob pondering obsolescence but here is what I jotted down…

-Fedoras, thick rimmed glasses
-Underlit bars, DJ pit in the sky
-Girls with short hair, wide hairbands, tights (often striped), cords, skirts
-Suit jackets w/ t-shirts, jeans, white sneakers (clean)
-Small amount of trash on floor, plastic
-30 year olds dressed like 20 year olds & 20 year olds dressed like teenagers. Teens in their place.
-Some tired observations on love, drugs, drink and gender
-Strange blend of inclusiveness & exclusiveness
-Fliers on a small table at the door. Lowlit main area, well lit washrooms w/ piss trays for men
- Girls with berets, “fuck me” boots
-Middle aged bird at the door, hip?
-Male, skinny, shaved head, scarf and grey jacket
-glue & paper from old posters left on walls

Huh, looks like I really held tightly onto the role of the objective observer eh? Also if anyone feels like explaining to me the entymology of the phrase "fuck me boots" then I'd love to hear. I mean, I get the idea but how did it come to be?

Right then, the Script to Screen course.

It was a hell of a day with much to take in. The strict course content on things like “What is a Sales Agent?” or “The importance of Chain Of Title” were easy enough, that kind of learning is something I’ve had plenty of experience with. But all else that came at me that day really left me in an odd way. Riding the Picadilly tube home, I’d even say I was the closest that I’ve ever been to throwing this whole “film thing” out the window. Not in a tantrum of frustration but what felt like a deadened, rational process of decision making.

Eventually I resolved to sleep on it and, of course, woke up Sunday morning better able to make sense of it all and with a mind to keep at this lengthy, arduous task I’ve set myself. But there’s no ignoring that my head had been seriously rattled – hardly what I’d been expecting.

This came primarily from two angles. The less detailed one being that I’d not put my head in a good position from the previous weeks crap sleep and the foul mistake of eating McDonalds for breakfast, as I’d found my usual home breakfast a bit lacking. The latter may sound like something bordering on superstition but I’ll swear on all the Baby Jesus’ you’ve got in your cupboard that eating a Sausage & Egg McMuffin does have a dramatic, chemically induced effect on the mood of those who do not consume them often. I myself seem to eat them once a year or even further apart, whatever period of time is necessary for me to forget why I was put off the time before. Some of what comes up in Super Size Me supports this, but I reckon I should either read up on it or at least get a post-it note tattoo like the amnesiac in Memento.

At least.

So there’s the physical set-up but the mental one is all the stranger. The teacher was a fellow ten years my senior with precisely that amount of post-education experience in the industry. English in origin but with a primarily North American education and though this was a kind of course of aspiring producers, he’d be primarily described as a writer/director who has had experience producing. He spoke and, more to the point, I took in what he said in much the same way as I have had my own manner of speaking described to me time and again over my whole life.

Fairly quick, lots of anecdotal examples and plenty of digressions which all intertwined in ellipses along the line of one primary narrative. There was a vast variety of tone and…I guess we’ll call them morals, rather than points. What made all these tales and sub-tales particularly hard for me to unravel on the spot was not only their density and volume but the broad spectrum of positive and negative elements. Mix this all with the somewhat surreal notion that I was looking at someone I could quite possibly become in ten years and by the end of the day my head felt packed with dozens of lengths of knotted up twine that needed sorting. Is this what some people feel like when I’m able to get away with rabbiting on for a good length of time?

In other details the hard information was very useful and I do feel that I have a better understanding of the process from writing to distribution. There were lots of handy details which I appreciated, particularly the copyright law for scripts in England which dictate that once the ink dries it is the sole property of the author – as opposed to the North American approach which requires that the script be registered with one governing body or the other. All in all the only thing I would have asked was that their might have been an outline for the students to help follow along and that some of the “No seriously, getting into this industry is a hell of a gamble and you may suffer Dissapointment” remarks had been left out. I’ve heard enough of those from all sorts of corners and if I’d been in a stronger state I think I’d have interrupted to specifically say “Yes thank you, now can we please move on”. But then, dwelling too long on one point is another of my traits I saw mirrored in this guy, so I shouldn’t be too hard.

At one point he described England as somewhere one can generally find a middling success, as opposed to abject failure or making X millions on the latest Harry Potter, and given that he later mentioned his investing in a new night club…I think that “middling” success would be fine by me, though I will still take aim at the highest point I can see.

As an aside, the teacher asked me if I was Australian. This is something my dad gets asked from time to time and I wonder if the Australian accent really can be considered the end result of blending Canadian and English accents. I don’t have any definitive conclusions on this number; I just thought I’d mention an oddity.

In the end I am still signing up for the Panico Film Society and writing my balls off (I was pleased to, at one point, be told that a good script is “everything”). More news as this develops.

So many knots to unravel, perhaps the Alexander approach?

Phew! I've just woken up and I feel like I've been out drinking, though I hardly think the pint of Strongbow I had with my lunch yesterday is the cause. The course was good, though not quite what I expected in some ways. I really need to decompress all I took in...

Until then here are some pictures I took around the area (Fulham) during my Thursday night sojourn.

Going to bed no later than 10:30pm defies thermodynamics by being both cool and hot.

So becuase I've racked up a sleep debt from too many late nights, I was a big fat 'tard and got on the wrong branch of the Northern tube line for getting me to the film night on time yesterday. Ryan North is a founding member of the "Going to bed at a responsible time is cool" club and I am normally a proud member...just not this week it seems. But I followed through anyways, just to know the route for tomorrow. It's a pretty nice neighborhood, though further than I thought, in and around the Panico building (which is a refurbished, churchlike, house of decent size). I'll post some "pics" when I get home tonight, along with others I took in recent times. Okay it sucked to miss the night and learn that I'll have to be up at a wee (for Saturday) hour to get to the course on time, but it could have been worse. I could have run into this guy.In positive devlopments, I got an email from the CapitalMag people that basically said "We are looking to host some short films on our site, do you know anywere we could get some short films?". To which I was like "Maybe I know a guy, maybe I know....me". We'll see what comes of that then!

Meanwhile, the debate in the comments section of my 100th post rolls on. Ladies and gents, please toss in your ten cents.

And lo...

...there are two updates at Bronze Age Sky God. You have "Aircraft Carrier Delight" and the far less criminal "Clive versus The Slug People: Round One". I used the same phrase once in each story, ten valueless points to whoever spots what it is.

Good news, CapitalMag liked my article and are interested in more! Meanwhile, I'm heading off to scout out the Panico building tonight and also to attend the free, public talk being given there by a London film maker on "the biz". Then on Saturday I shall take my first class with them. Huzzah.

Little Johnny is on the move again.

100th Post: To show how we've grown here at STA...

...a post on maturity.

I swear, if I don't talk about this while I'm still in that nebulous realm of "young adult" then I'll never be taken seriously. Interpret the following as the cantankerous assault on youth culture of an elderly man, on a bus where all the other passengers quietly wish he'd just get off at the next stop, if you must. But baby darling, it simply ain't.

I am plenty aware that puberty rituals are completely arbitrary contrivences, no matter how deep their roots penetrate our history and culture, the point of origin will always be the same: Some person, some where, just decided that behaviour X marks you as mature or immature. We choose these meanings, they have no bearing in natural law as gravity and weather patterns do. That being said, the meme of immaturity is getting way out of hand in several generations - including my own.

Or is it just a cultural shift?

For the sake of not going on a (longer?) tirade, I'll just use one specific example. When I see a man wearing a business suit, suitcase in hand and walking on his way to work I think "there is an adult". I see the same man pinching his suit jacket up with a backpack and I begin to wonder if the bigger businessmen are going to try and steal his juice box at lunch. But really, does it matter what he brings his important papers (and juice box) to work in? Couldn't it be the tanned and treated skin of camel for all it matters? Well to a point...but infinite subjectivity is a gutless argument and one which if properly applied would render all things meaningless. We've decided that this and that mean such and such, so let's play by the rules we wrote.

Besides, Maturity does not have to be the death of fun or humour and it is a marvelous tool towards greater self-respect and ability to wrestle with whatever beasts the world might throw your way. The perks are all too often forgotten and a good deal of the negative aspects are really just frequently made assumptions instead of genuine side effects. I'll tell you, I'm sick of the youth culture worship in Western society and few things would please me more than to see this trend reversed.

I mean hey, I get the allure - I've given in to it too. Retreating into youth fools you into feeling further from death, further from the problems and responsibilities you're wrestling with today. Teenagers often try to act older because they want to be able to drive, to drink, to be at a point where their bodies don't make them feel awkward and they have more developed social skills. But I've seen all too many people in their early to late twenties who are are wearing and doing the exact same shit they did in their teens but with the addition of legally purchased alcohol and the ability to enter venues which sell it. This worries me, it really does! Not because of some offense to my delicate sensibilites but because the major ingredient of immaturity is stagnation.

Can we please push things forward?

Maybe I am simply a big party pooper? I guess I'm giving in to some ill-defined evil which makes me want to have the more traditional trappings of adulthood? Perhaps, but if the possability of my being wrong is to be considered then it is only fair to consider the possability of my being right or at least on the right track. I'd love to hear what anybody has to say in the comments section of this post becuase it's an issue I've been coming back to for a couple of years now and I do not feel my thoughts on the matter are nearly as solid as they are on, say, climate change*. Anyways, that "whoomph" noise you just heard was me dismounting a rather tall horse - I suppose. But seriously, your thoughts are invited - I feel quite inarticulate with this post because half the time I've tried to rattle off a sub-topic I find myself getting part way through, then just deleting it.

Is there some broad method of approaching this or is it a highly specific, case-by-case issue?


*I don't like it, no sir. It makes me sad and sometimes I bake a little cake to feel better. The cake will have raisins more often than not.

Now look what he's done...

Check-it-0oooot

Artists get to have sketchbook sites, I get to have this.

WHY CAN I NOT SLEEP?

One of my favorite pictures of one of my favorite places......more pictures along with sweet n' sour context later!

This sort of thing makes me laugh until I cry

Bill Cosby knows what he's on about

About a year ago Vice Magazine put out an issue on Babyboomers which was...less than positive towards that particular generation. In the interest of fairness they had one article where they listed eight baby boomers they were partial to and on that list was Bill Cosby. The reason was not to do with his years as an entertainer but for the fact that he had the courage to stand up and suggest that maybe, just maybe, the African-American community needed better modern rolemodels then barely literate rappers and sports players. That yes Whitey has done his share of keeping them down, but that it was also the responsibilty of black people to pull themselves up. That the family unit needed to be repaired and education needed to be put out as a virtue, not "acting white".

I have to say, my own respect for the man swelled tenfold upon learning this. It's not easy to take on "your" demographic and not be tarred with any number of quick and conveniant negative labels. It's not easy to preach self reliance and improvement when so many people would rather get their backs up then take responsibility for their actions or, you know, make an effort.

This is the speech to which they were referring and it makes compelling reading, no matter who you are. Surprise surprise, Bill caught some flack for what he said and he gives a response to it here, on the implausibly named Tavis Smiley show. Black civil rights in America have been pushed way out of the spotlight by the big developments of our young millenium but, with Barack Obama having announced his presidential candidacy, it's bound to come back in the next couple of years. Given that Barack was present when Cosby gave this speech, and openly applauded not only at the end but several times throughout, I think it's worth reading what Cosby had to say if only to get a better understanding of some of the views held by this up and coming "JKF-in-the-making".

We need more...

...movie posters like this one. Man but this has class and a combination of expressions which really draws you in. Certainly, it's what led to my renting it.

Maybe I'd still like the space station

Oh me

Oh my

Oh wonder

Meanwhile, I'm defintely getting more jaded. When I read this my first thought was "I saw this episode when it was about Nike". I'm thinking that there is a downside to having been exposed to countless pleas for help by the third world for as long as I can remember.

In the interest of this not turning into a mere warehouse of links and embedded video, I thought I might babble on a bit about some stuff.

Can you dig it?

I have decided that I am going to do my best to take a stand against the killing of time.

Since about 18 months ago I've noticed that my perception of the passage of time has ratcheted up a rather noticable notch. It's not the first time, certainly, and I look back with increasing fondness on a memory of me at a single digit age being told by my mum that the Carp Fair wouldn't be on for a month. What awe I felt at that stretch of time.

But now I find that a month is comperable to how I used to see a week, a week is more akin to a day and a day is more akin to three hours or so.

Like a lot of things, it's alarming but what can one do against time? Nothing much, but what can you do about your perception of its passing? Bore yourself to tears and it will slow. Snort cocaine off of Scarlett Johannson's left buttock while listening to a duet between Thom York, Bjork and a panda being played live in the auditorium of your personal space station and it will most likely speed up a bit.

Most likely.

But nobody wants to live a stretched out bit of boredom and I think it would be just an exercise in meaningless distraction to fill my time with as much entertainment as possible so as to send myself (perceptually) hurtling towards my emerald studded space coffin (complete with space servants to join me in the afterlife). Okay, fair enough, this leads to a more rewarding and tantalizing path then picking a spot on the spectrum of hedonism. Being productive in a personally rewarding fashion. Writing always "steadies time" for me and this is certainly one of the reasons I love it. But until I'm self supporting, I need to work a day job.

Now we're really heading into first world problem territory. Brace yourselves.

I...I want my day job to be something I want to do and which contributes more to my life than a paycheque. I want to stop pressing the mental fast forward button on stretches of time in my day which do not include physical pain or recovery from illness. I want to stop feeling like I'm mortgaging about 2/3 of my waking life to sustain myself and be able to enjoy the other 1/3. Essentially, I want to lose the prefix.

Just typing that last bit sent a deluge of imagery roaring through my head. Oh but Mr. Brackenbury, there are so many people so much worse off than you. There are those starving people, those diseased people, those abused working people, those people on the wrong end of a state sponsored genocide, those people who are forced at gunpoint to commit incest, those people who come to a website they regularly frequent for something interesting or pleasant and find neither and who could forget those tired, swollen bellied children with the flies crawling all over their eyeballs like octegenarian golfers parading around the 9th green to figure out the angle of their putt - those kids which were just segwayed to by TV's own Dr. Frasier Crane, Kelsey Grammar, while you're just trying to be one of those children who gets to eat cereal and watch cartoons before going to school.

I think this is how generally well meaning people end up hating the poor just as they can wind up resenting a television show or a band - overplay. Is...is this an awful portent of my eventual transformation into a sharp fanged, utterly merciless bastard with no concern for anybody but himself? I certainly hope it's just a phase I'll outgrow by the next clothing or musical style I find myself enjoying.

Right then, to sum up, three new goals to achieve by years end (and preferably before).

• Support myself with a job I enjoy and that is directly related to film.
• Forgive those less fortunate for being so*.
• Find and maintain a satisfactory perception of the passage of time.

Ok, ready SET GO!

(This rambling essay/manifesto was brought to you by the increasingly mind-gumming illness which I am losing the war to).

*This is, of course, worded just a little tongue-in-cheek.

I gotta say, I'm tempted

Okay I'm having a bit of a Top Gear wank...

...but it's fun having them take the piss out of Hummers (sorta!).

Speaking of cultural differences....

You haff to verk for money

Phew! So I’m a little worn out, despite getting home at an oddly reasonable hour last night. I think some sort of virus is having a 12 round bout with my immune system which has yet to see a victory either way. It might just be a virulent meme, since I can’t for the life of me get the base line for “Billie Jean” out of my head.

Nonetheless, I headed down to Brick Street (via Liverpool station) last night, clad in notebooks and armed with no less than two pens and a mechanical pencil to defend myself from getting mugged by the awkwardness one can feel when heading to a “hip bohemian venue” on their own. I did, however, get taken aback momentarily when I spotted Arabic (and only Arabic) street signs on some of the side roads I navigated. This was rendered stranger still as I heard more Polish than anything else (non-English) while walking around.

With a few lines of advice from good old Roberto in the back of my mind, I set to a winning start by sitting with my notebook and pint in the wrong half of the bar! It was a very enjoyable part with plush leather couches and all the rest, which I think I shall definitely return to, but not the right one! 93 Feet East (the venue, not an address) strikes me as a pretty successful place if only by merit of its size. It has a very large courtyard with a dozen picnic tables and a BBQ vendor who, if you ask nicely, will allow you to pay just a bit too much for sausages, chicken breasts and the like. Then there is the area where I first sat, with those couches I mentioned set about low wooden tables with a fine black finish, tall windows that look out on the courtyard and an affordably priced bar with nice staff. On that particular evening the DJ (who was, to my amusement, crammed in the upper right corner of the ceiling like a stuffed toy in some girls room) laid down some really relaxing, technically interested sounds.Now these two parts could fool most people into thinking they’d seen the whole place, I’d like to think, but after 40 minutes of sipping Strongbow and writing letters I asked the bar staff if the event was still on and discovered that yes it was, but in the area next door. So I hurried round to a third area, basically a tall roofed rectangle with a stage on one end (with a drop down screen for the viewing) and a larger DJ/Technical booth jammed up against the ceiling in the back. Lucky for me there had been problems with the AV setup which delayed the beginning until about 30 seconds after I found a seat. I then saw 13 London shorts and a handful of bands, I'd expand upon that but then I shall be doing so in my article for CapitalMag. I'll link to that when it's up, should they find my 350-500 words pristine enough to "print".

But for one exception....amongst the short stories, music videos and dubious "concept" videos there was a bit of outright propaganda for one of the looniest organizations I've seen in a while. I mean, O.I.L. are not as bad as some folk but I question this misapplication of fervor when there are so many more tangible and pressing issues to wrestle with than some nauseatingly vague mission to "reclaim love". Then again, perhaps I'm being a bit harsh due to how frighteningly unnerving the facial ticks of their leader were to me. I couldn't find any picutres of her, but imagine if you took a woman with a ratty brown ponytail and performed an operation on her brain so that in one small corner of her mind she would always think that a tiger is leaping down on her from a high cliff...you'd have an idea.

The Shortwave-sponsored event is happening again on the 8th of April and I have to say that I do feel inclined to give it another go, particularly a go in which I won't have to frantically try to write down names of people and production companies in a room darkened for viewing. Not to say that I didn't enjoy playing reporter, I'll definitely do it again some time but I do hope that I can busy myself with enough film work (of a more hands on nature) so that I can't.

Enjoy the pictures, I'm off to collapse after shambling through a day at work...