I’ve gone two weeks without cigarettes. I’ve now replaced smoking with candy. Swedish fish, mostly.
One addiction made me cool, the other makes me fat. I think I’ve made the wrong choice.
(Just kidding. Losing weight is a lot cheaper, and easier, than losing cancer. I’m happy with my choice. And I really like candy.)
I love this picture.
note: while the pic in question is strictly not NSFW, you will be browsing toward “boners.com”, and other content on boners.com is quite NSFW.
note: NSFW = “not safe for work”
Love,
Matty
I just went to Amazon to check the status of something I ordered (with free supersaver shipping, because I’m poor, so it’s taking a long time.) and got completely distracted by this. I really really want one. I heard Jeff Bezos talking about this in an interview years ago, and it stuck with me, and now here it is.
This is extremely brilliant. Live sketch comedy? Who knew? I think it could be a hit.
In other news, I went to see Beowulf in 3D at the imax tonight. Sure, it was $14, but it was pretty dang stunning. It pulled no punches (actually, it pulled Angelina Jolie’s cgi nipples. Wait, “pulled [her] nipples” makes it sound like they actually pulled on…I mean, her nipples weren’t in the movie.), and it was honestly good to see something that was stylistically similar to Shrek have some extremely overt sexual overtones.
What follows is a discussion on “suspension of disbelief” in film.
I’m not entirely sure if the “motion capture” cgi accomplished anything in terms of adding to the film, except for the idea that entire landscapes can be facsimilated more easily than they could in live action. But, if Lord of the Rings has taught us anything, it’s that enormous live action fantasy epics are possible. The thing about film is that suspension of disbelief is not nearly as required as it is on stage, or in graphic media, or even the written word. On film, what you see is what you get, and since your mind does not need to fill things in (thereby, since the origin of the image comes from within the beholder, the beholder is more likely to believe it), what appears on film needs to be believable. Now, this can be circumvented in animated film by having something realistic (a princess, for instance) next to something fantastic, yet stylistically congruent (a dragon). This all changed with Jurassic Park putting live action on screen with cgi dinosaurs. The use of dinosaurs as the subject of the cgi made the process much easier to digest, since they weren’t human. CGI humans are still not perfect, and therefore somewhat distracting. In The Matrix: Reloaded you could tell in the fight between Neo and the 100 Agent Smiths when it stopped being Keanu and started being cgi Keanu. And it was distracting. And with Beowulf, where all of the characters are cgi, it’s hard to not think about that. I feel that a film like A Scanner Darkly utilized “rotoscoping” to make the trippy drug-addled hallucinations more believable, and it worked well. I’m just having trouble trying to figure out why Robert Zemeckis made the decision.
I haven’t had a ciggy in a week.
I support the writers’ strike. For two reasons:
1) The strike is happening due to a dispute between the writers guild and the studios over “residuals” from “new media”. Residuals are to the film medium what royalties are to music; musicians get a percentage from sales of their song usage, and film writers get some percentage from every time TBS shows their movie, or you buy the DVD. Basically, the last time there were negotiations over residuals was before DVD and the internet, and when it came time to decide what amount of the sales from video distribution of TV shows (specifically) went to the writers, the WGA conceded since releasing season sets on VHS was, pretty much, pointless, and the writers got no residuals from VHS distribution of TV shows. Now that there is DVD, as well as streaming video of entire episodes of TV shows on the internet, writers aren’t getting any residuals from DVD sales or internet, aka “new media”. Keep in mind that most TV writers aren’t along the lines of the “superstar” writer-producers like JJ Abrams (Felicity, Alias, Lost) or David E. Kelly (just about every lawyer show on TV, ever), but pretty much middle-class no-name writers. Residuals keep food on these people’s tables, not Hummers in these people’s multi-car garages. So this isn’t rich people going on strike to make themselves richer (although the rich are, actually, on strike, and they will get more money when negotiations go through, but they seek to gain about as much as any other writers). Rather, it’s people trying to protect the interests of middle-class writers who aren’t getting their due from the extremely lucrative DVD releases of TV shows.
2) Production is halting on many TV shows, and that scares me. According to the SAG (screen actors’ guild), actors are required to continue to work, in their capacity as actors, as well as the DGA (Directors’ guild of America), requiring that production staff (everyone from executive producer down to the production assistants) continue to work in their production capacity. However, how does that fare for writer-actors or writer-producers? Particularly writer-producers who really can’t oversee production without tweaking a script. And improvisational actors, such as Steve Carell, who “write” their lines and a lot of their actions during filming (and who, as a member of the WGA, supports the strike). Additionally, only half of the episodes for this season of TV have been written so far, so come January or February, no more shows. Late-night TV is already done. So, TV kinda dies in two months. And that sucks. But by supporting the strike, I hope to expedite the process.
So, on principle, I support the strike, but as a fan, I’m kinda bummed that things have to stop. The last strike lasted about five months. Let’s try to make this one shorter.
So, to show your support, sign this petition:
http://www.PetitionOnline.com/WGA/
So, I’ve been working on the secret project for, um, two monthsish now, and it’s just started moving. Like, it’s on its feet. And it’s very exciting. I’m very excited about it. Everyone else involved (and there are many people involved) are excited about it.
But I can’t talk about it, and it frustrates me.
Actually, I talk about it in real life as much as I can, as well as the “Matty is considering a move to L.A.” thing (backstory: I posted a “status update” on facebook when I was considering a move to L.A. in passing, since it was a reference to an Art Brut song, and everyone kinda jumped on me to ask about why I would want to move to the (apparently) most horrid place on the planet. The answer: my top choice for grad school. But I don’t really want to talk about that either.).
But it’s moving, which is a lot more than I can say for most of my projects. And it’s going well. Better than I could ever have hoped (and someone is going to have to remind me to talk about why when I finally do start actually talking about the secret project, because I have a million thanks to give to one person regarding their contributions to the project. Not that anyone else involved is less thanks-worthy, but this one is adding more to the project than I could have ever dreamed, in ways that I would not have thought of. Everyone else is doing perfectly awesomely, but this one’s a genuine surprise.)
The thing, though, is that I don’t want to jinx it by talking it up too much. And I don’t think I would, but I’m just so into this project that I don’t want to screw it up. I mean, I’ve actually screwed up in several ways at this point, mostly due to my own assumptions about things that I really need permission for. But I don’t…care. I’m taking things in stride, compromising with myself, not overexerting myself. And I’m enjoying myself.
So that’s as much as I’m willing to talk right now. Sorry if this was a huge cock-tease.
