Wednesday, September 30, 2009

Business Letters

I got about half way through sending out licensing request letters to companies via e-mail and fax before I realized, I'm sending things to corporations, i.e. actual professionals. Additionally, I'm not a student anymore and even though this is for a student film, if I wanna be taken seriously I need to send this letter looking nice and professional and starting off with the letter looking like it did (just Dear Sir or Madam at the top and nothing else) wasn't gonna cut it.

Anyway, thank GOD for the internet because I would not have remembered correctly how to write a business letter otherwise.

Here's what my original letters looked like:


Here's what a proper business letter should look like:


I was about to start praying that I still had my Writers Express or my Write Source 2000 books. Actually, it kind of makes me wonder if I still do have those books...

Testimonies Premiere Pt. 2

On Sunday I went up to Connecticut (I was about to say down to CT but that doesn't make any sense, I always wanna say down but... yea... it's weird) and saw Testimonies of a Quiet New England Town premier at RAHM High School (Matt Troy's old high school). There must have been at least 700 people there for the turnout, which was amazing.

The film looked great, (as expected of a Matthew Troy - Ivaylo Getov combination) and the overall events of that day was fun-filled, including the reception at the fire house after wards. Provided, the film isn't perfect, I am not afraid to say that it could have used work in some areas, but it's cool and given the limited amount of time that was had to complete the entire production, It's amazing (and also great for its intended use; supplementary educational material, i.e. stuff for teachers to show in classrooms.) Meaning, it's not the greatest story arch/conflict wise but it's true to it's facts (As true as you can get), it intrigues and it's 13 minutes long so it fits well into a classroom time period.

Additionally, I must give Paul Penczner many many kudos because he did well in covering up my production sound blunders with his post sound wizardry.

Sunday, September 27, 2009

Continued Joblessness

On Friday I called ABC to see if they had filled the position yet for the position of an Overnight Avid Digitizer I had applied for a week ago; they had. While it did make sense that they didn't want me (I didn't hang up after the phone interview with a very good feeling that it had gone over well), thinking about it later, it felt like a slap in the face. This was a job that I felt more than qualified for because I knew the systems and it was a very simple task so if there was anything I was not familiar with I could easily be run through on it and I would have been fine. However, four years of film school later, even the lowest position of an Overnight (meaning 8PM to 6AM) Avid Digitizer wasn't given to me. It really made me wonder what the hell did I spend 4 years in college for if I can't even get the lowest entry level position in my field of study?

Honestly, it wasn't even like it was real digitizing anyway. It was going to be ingested clips meaning it was already digitized and all I would need to do is download it off an FTP site, import it into avid and organize it into bins, doesn't take too much to know how to do that.

The Confidence Man Pt. 3

After being turned away for the first time (and third attempted viewing) of The Confidence Man three weeks ago on Thursday the 10th, I made my way back over to Pier 40 and The Lilac, this time an hour early and with a friend; I still got turned away... well, sorta.

I had learned from Nick, whom I learned I could insult rather freely on this blog because he refuses to read it... something about getting in trouble by association, a reference to my previous blog blunder with the kind institution of NYU, that the final run of The Confidence Man was this week and its final show would be Saturday night. Saturday night was out because I had grandparents to visit so I made an appointment with my suitemate Junior year and roommate Senior year at NYU, Yeison (pronounced Jason) Rodriguez (he's a neuroscience/computer science major so you can imagine a lot of lan-ing between the two of us while we lived together) to go this past Thursday.

We arrived an hour before the show and put our names on the waiting list. The man at the table said "how many times is this now?" The answer was 3, pending my admission to this particular show. There were a lot of people and we had a sneaking suspicion that because we weren't there for the first time, our place was pushed to the back of the list. However, luckily, Nick and my colorsync teacher Tzipi Trope was there for the show and managed to get in so I stuck around to make sure she followed the correct docent that would take her to the scenes that involved Nick. My hanging around the pier after being rejected for the second time resulted in a quick check of the ship's capacity and then an allowed entrance for myself and my guest.

I got onto the boat but this time I didn't follow any docent, instead, seeing as to how it was going to be my last time aboard the ship to watch this play, I decided to just wander about and see whatever there was to see with Yeison, so after buying a beer and leaving a decent tip to support The Woodshed Collective we casually wandered about the boat for an hour and 40 minutes just enjoying the general bad-ass-ed-ness of the play, witnessing a great amount of things I had not seen before.

My only regret is that I did not give myself the opportunity to go to the play more often because there was still so much that I had missed and wished that I had seen.

Friday, September 25, 2009

Testimonies Premiere

Hey guys! Testimonies of a Quiet New England Town premieres on Sunday in Hebron High School in Hebron CT.

If you don't remember, "Testimonies" (yea, I'm not typing out that long ass name every time, it's just gonna be Testimonies from here on out in this post) was the film that my good friend Matthew Troy directed as his first independent film about three months ago.

I'll post more about the film and the screening after I finally get to see what we worked on at the premiere this Sunday. Additionally, if it goes anywhere aside from just the premiere I'll be sure to post about that as well. Who knows, this may turn into something.

Tuesday, September 22, 2009

I Knew It!

I was reading manga as I usually do on onemanga and came across this:

Somehow, I've always known girls are like this (not the last panel, I'm talking about the middle panel).

'nuff said, back to more manga reading. AKA my study of Japanese art/storytelling (yea, bullshit, but whatever)

Monday, September 21, 2009

Some Movie Reviews

So I've realized that I haven't really posted much of anything about film recently, which is problematic because that was what this blog was supposed to be about, but recently it's taken on the role of my xanga and picked up a lot of my random bitching and moaning about how miserable the world is, so here's a return to what this blog was supposed to be related to.

Movies I've recently seen:

District 9
The Spirit
9

District 9:
I was sort of apathetic about district 9 because on one side it was way too hyped up but on the other hand it was difficult for me to tune out the rage of my friend who sat next to me and absolutely hated the film. Personally I liked the style and cinematography and hell, the concept was great for me too but the characters were difficult to relate to and therefore everything that happened seemed rather distant and unaffecting. I believe the solution to that issue would be to make the main character less of an ass/less selfish. (everything that motivates him up until the last 5-10 minutes is entirely for his own benefit.

The Spirit
I went into this one expecting a serious attempt at Will Eisner's "The Spirit" and the film noir genre, I shouldn't have. This was clearly one of those movies that recognized how bad it was and just went with it, from Samuel L. Jackson as The Octopus smashing a toilet over The Spirit's head (and indeed trapping him in the bowl) to the endless supply of clone flunkies that seem to enjoy dying. This is in no way an angry attempt at making fun of the film, to me it just honestly read as that.

9
I was really excited for this movie, especially when I saw the trailer and even more so when I saw the short it was based off of. After all the hype in my mind I thought it was only ok though, which was disappointing. I think the characters could have been developed more (I don't really know anything about anyone) and that's the film's greatest flaw. I don't feel anything when great adversity is overcome and I don't feel anything when failure falls upon our group of heroes either. There are pluses though, I thought the animation was amazing, backgrounds and character designs breathtaking and the craft in terms of movement, spot on, but at the end of it all the story didn't quite hold up entirely for me. I might just have to watch it again, but yea, it didn't do it for me.


Ok, so that's my return to movies and stuff, hopefully soon I'll have something of my own to show and critique so I'm not just criticizing other people's stuff.

Sunday, September 20, 2009

Sweets Make the World Better

I found myself in quite the undesirable position of having an overwhelming urge to hit something yet not having anything around I could get away with hitting.

There was a large pile of things that got me to this point, the surface issue being that my parents had dragged me along shopping with them to Kohls, which, actually, wasn't that big of a deal, because we had finished with sufficient time for me to go home to try to meet up with some people and hit up the always-crappy but why the hell not since it's there - Bloomfield Harvest Fest. Yes Matt, if you're reading this, your Hebron Harvest Fest wins out over my Bloomfield Harvest Fest; its bigger, runs longer and there are actual hicks (not to mention people that you know and talk to.)

However, I was wrong in my assumption that I would get home in time. My dad had decided to take an early turn off the highway to visit the next Kohls, yes, just for the hell of it, making me sit around and watch the time go from 4:45PM to 5:30PM; the Harvest Fest ended at 6, or so it said online anyway. And this is why, I decided, we need a better public transportation system for the entire state of New Jersey. Buses and Trains don't cut it by themselves, I should be able to walk down the street and get to a subway station that I can take within walking distance to my house, or at least to another train that will take me within walking distance of my house.

I have to insert a disclaimer here: I recognize that there was a whole lesson about not burning people on the internet/be careful about what you put on the internet lesson to be learned from the past few weeks, but for some reason I feel its okay to vent out about this particular issue on this blog. Then again, thinking I would never see nor hear from people my blog may affect ever again was what ultimately got me in trouble last time, so maybe I should use some code.

Now the reason for my great desire to get to my town's harvest fest is for the almost-simple reason that I wanted two things: cotton candy and a funnel cake A.K.A. greasy sugary death. Of course, the desire for these things, which are best shared with friends, stems from the need to be distracted from the woes of being unemployed and nagged constantly by my parents, as well as finding out that someone is seeing some prissy little fucker from our rival collegiate academy to the west. Oddly enough, the discovery of the last one has been bothering me only on and off for the past day or so and I wish it would either stay for a while or go away entirely because otherwise it's just being unnecessarily annoying. Additionally, part of me wonders if my being upset over said last issue is just me being unreasonable, but whatever, I digress.

After 30 minutes of waiting outside the second Kohls (I refused to go in) I call my parents to ask them if they're done yet. The answer was "I don't know where your father is, I'm over by hand bags, let me go find him. About ten minutes later they walk out of the store, empty handed. At that point what races through my mind is something like this:

"Are you kidding me? You insist on wasting time at a second Kohls and come out empty handed? Please, if you're gonna waste time by coming to a store to look at things to could have looked at 40 minutes ago at the identical first store we were at, then please at least buy something."

We manage to get home at 5:40 and I battle with myself as to whether or not I want to try to get there in time for the last 5 minutes to pass. Initially I decide "no" but as I get to my room and get ready to sit grumpily in front of my computer, I decide "fuck that, I'm not going to resign to sitting around and grumpily blogging about how much my life sucks, I'm at least going to go out and walk around.

So I get outside, yelling "I'm going for a walk" as I leave (my dad asks "are you coming back for dinner?" I respond "probably" he says "alright, call") and head down the street. Across the street from George's house I decide to give him a call to see what's up and if he wants to join, he's sitting around relaxing and answers "no, I was there yesterday..." and so I head over to where the Harvest Fest is alone.

The Bloomfield Harvest Fest, like many things Bloomfield, is wack. The festival extends one street in the center of town from the high school to a T-intersection with "Bloomfield Ave." Much to my surprise, most of the festival was still up and running. Several booths and food vendors were packing up, but everything else was still there, including the annoying high school brats that think they're "oh-so-ghetto" that I typically roll my eyes at. I text Joyce telling her about the festival still being on, but I don't expect a response, (seeing as to how my earlier text requesting deliverance from my suburban department store hell via 12 gauge shotgun or hollow point bullet seemed to have been ignored) nor do I get one.

I wander from end to end and then make my way over to a stand located on the town's green somewhere in the center of the hubbub of the festival and get what I was looking for: a bag of cotton candy; $5.00 for a small that could easily have passed for an extra large in New York. I then started to feel a little sick after eating it all by myself within a 10 minute time span.

At least I got what I went there for.

I guess it worked, because I can't bring myself to care anymore.

Saturday, September 19, 2009

I Don't Care

nd He took a deep breath and tried to relax. Blasting music as loud as the speakers would take before they distorted wasn't doing much for him, but he realized that thinking rationally before blogging would be a good idea. The deep breath seemed to make a difference but his fingers were still glittery, flying across the keyboard with an excess of motion and energy, there was news that he discovered that was... damaging to him, more so than he thought it would.

Despite all of the events that had transpired over the course of the past three months and all that he had accomplished, at the end of it all he was still feeling like a bum as the world continued to move around him; he was not in a good place.

He hadn't seen her since graduation, which was probably a great idea because it allowed for less suffering. Thoughts would occasionally drift in and out of mind, but he expected that to be normal and as time passed those thoughts lessened and faded, fading from mind almost entirely, he had other things to think and worry about.

Tonight was a mistake. He, in his bummery, laid on his back looking at the shiny device that took a large part of his attention and therefore his time every day (it allowed for games and music, sometimes simultaneously) as he surfed an equally distracting, addictive and overall unhealthy website where people pretend to keep in touch with each other by sending short 2-5 sentence messages to each other on "walls".

There was a conversation between her and her friend and he felt a little weird reading it, but he shrugged it off and read it anyway. He learned not too long ago that the internet is a public forum and nothing on it is private and justified that since that's the case, anything on it is rightfully up for grabs. He should have remembered that on this public forum a single line can burn, and that's all it took.

Upon completion of reading he put down the shiny device and sat up. "I don't care," he said heading to his door. He was lying to himself. "Damnit! I don't have anywhere to go,". He gave up and sat at his desk, looking online for a person to tell or a public forum to post about it, one where friend those he wanted to read it could read it and one where others would not. He hoped that his post wouldn't turn on him and create another burn mark.

He then decided "fuck that," and found some things to delete.

Thursday, September 17, 2009

Empty Trains

I love riding on empty trains. I commute to and from Manhattan every day from my town of Bloomfield NJ, so every day I hop a NJ Transit train into Penn Station to go to my internship at PBS. Usually I take a late train home, late ranging from 10:30PM to 12:30AM and when I do the train is empty.

I'm not going to pretend that there's some deep and meaningful reason as to why I like taking an empty train, because there isn't. The reason I like taking an empty train is simply because when the train is empty I get my pick of the seats. I can sit where I want and I can sprawl out all over the seat and not be concerned about anyone else sitting next to me and since I often come home late (and therefore tired) I take advantage of the space, making sure my often heavy bag has its own space on the seat I'm sitting on. It's glorious and I get a decent amount of sleeping done as the train brings me home to Bloomfield.

Despite my late nights and empty trains on my way home, I rarely, if ever, manage to catch an empty train in. More often then not I am actually packed onto a crowded train and angry with the world because I'm exhausted from lack of sleep. Most of the time I manage to grab a small uncomfortable seat to myself where the handicapped priority seating is, but there are days where I'll walk onto the train and there are no seats available. I hate those days.

At first, when I came across days like that I would just stand for the duration of the trip, resigning myself to a corner of the section by the doors that isn't in the vestibule, brooding the entire time and cursing the world. However, one bold day I decided to continue walking through the train from car to car and lo and behold, I found an isle spot on a three-seater. (Unspoken train ettiquite states that sitting next to someone is only acceptable if you know them or its a three-seater so the middle seat is empty, or it's a two seater, but only to some people) From this I learned a valuable lesson; I can stand and brood, cursing the world for the cards I've been delt, or I can move forward.

Moving forward isn't a garuntee that things will get better, honestly, I had to move through quite a few cars that were worse than the one I was in, but eventually I found a lone seat. However, even if I didn't find that lone seat, moving forward and trying to improve my situation definately beats the hell out of standing around and brooding.

Tuesday, September 15, 2009

A weekend of buses, hicks and other stuff

I left Ashna's party at 11:30PM. Nick had offered to let me stay at his place but I didn't want to interrupt the privacy that he apparently didn't need but should have with this new female person that was clinging to his lips with hers. Needless to say, Ashna and myself were quite proud of him/ joyous that something finally happened for him, and that the something wasn't of the crazy variety. Eva, or as this something went by, is probably best described in this conversation with a Mr. Ant. Jones:

Me
She's very...
(at a loss for words)
Feitelian

Ant. Jones
Yea, but, like, even more so

This, of course, means that they'll, knock on wood, get along together great.

However, I digress, because Nick's new girlfriend is not the subject of the story. So going back to what I was saying, I decided to leave the bar at 11:30PM with only one drink in me so I could get out of Williamsburg "Hipstersville" Brooklyn and over to Port Authority in time to catch the last bus home to Bloomfield.

I was looking forward to being home after a trip to decently borderline very rural Connecticut to visit/assist good friend Matthew Troy, who had organized an event for his town's fire department called The Muster. I was on hand to operate his EX-3, which is a very nice camera, but SxS cards are quite expensive and the SD to SxS adapters are quite finicky, so use with caution. (BTW, I'm my own damn DIT!!!)

This weekend in CT involved several trips to the Hebron Harvest Fair where we bore witness to many glorious displays of redneckery including, but not limited to:

Oxen Pulls
Tractor Pulls
Modified Tractor Pulls
Demolition Derby
Dock Dogs

Yes, what better way to show your neighbor you're better than them by getting your dog to jump further than their dog... also getting your Ox/horse/tractor to pull more weight further than their ox/horse/tractor.

Aside from all of the wonderful sights seen at the fair, I learned that country folk are really bitter with city folk, as best outlined in this conversation below:

Me
Hey Matt, do you have a wet-nap
or anything like that?

Matt
Why, what happened?

Me
Nothing, my hand's just muddy.

Lady
It's just mud! you'll live, city
boy!

Me
I know that, I'd just rather not touch
Matt's $10,000 camera with my
grimy-ass hands

Lady
There's plenty of water around, just stick
your hand out in the rain!

Yes, the conversation did go like that, and yes, I know she was just teasing, but a noteworthy conversation none the less.

So after a fun time filled with freshly made donuts, fried dough and locally produced milk. (Not to forget the junk cars crashing into each other) my only regret laid in my decision to leave my cowboy hat at home.

A two or three-hour bus ride later landed me back in Manhattan's Port Authority, and from there to Ashna's party. This was a legitimate bus, as opposed to my bus ride there which was a coach van to some random street in Hartford. Additionally, the van was rather late in picking me up and even later in dropping me off and made entirely complete with our grumpy Chinese driver.

I left Ashna's party, as mentioned before, at 11:30PM to catch the last bus to Bloomfield at 12:45AM, which may seem a little extreme, but trust me, it's not. I got back to Port Authority at 12:30AM, just in time to discover that all the ticket windows had just closed (no shitting, they close at 12:30AM). However, a second discovery was made: despite the fact that the sign for the bus says to purchase tickets at a ticket window beforehand, you can actually purchase tickets on the bus.

The trip home was fast. I was at my desired stop in almost 20 minutes, but not before the guy in front of me blew chunks all over the seat next to him.


Thursday, September 10, 2009

Apologizing

Here's the thing about apologizing; it's either a lot worse than you imagine or a lot better, it's never quite what you expect it to be.

Of course, when you plan out everything you're going to say in a long cinematic speech like I do, you rarely if ever get the opportunity to say what you have planned out. In the rare instances when you are actually given the chance to say everything you planned to you discover life isn't a movie and the poignant message you had all laid out in your mind is reduced to fragmented sentences and a jumble of words.

This time I was fortunate, the apology to Dean Antonio and Patty Pearson went better than I imagined, although it's difficult for it to have gone worse than I imagined when I was imagining everything from heated anger and screaming that prevented a word from escaping my mouth to physically being struck (to which I had a request planned where I asked that they give me fair warning before hand so I could remove my glasses first.) Eventually often troublesome but this time rather trusty logic prevailed as my mind reminded the rest of me that they were not the kind of people to do either of the above.

So I got my chance to say my long cinematic speech of how I was sorry and didn't mean to undermine them and the program and how I was sorry that I did and ultimately sorry for betraying their trust. Despite the opportunity, I decided on the train ride over to campus that I wouldn't give a long cinematic speech and would stick with KISS (keep it simple stupid), which was the right choice because even I couldn't mess it up then.

The worst part of the entire experience was the anticipation because no matter what I told myself beforehand, which I told myself countless legitimate things, going through the day must have been at least a bit of like what death row inmates feel like on their final day and walking through the hallway of the 9th floor to Patti's office certainly made me feel like I was a "dead man walking".

However, despite all the anticipation and worry, when I reached Patti's office I was, surprisingly enough, greeted with a smile and welcomed into her office and my short and sweet apology was accepted. While everything wasn't "fine" now that I apologized, it was better, and that's how it should be.

Wednesday, September 9, 2009

Big Brother Cut

Good news, and this time without bad news attached. (more on that in the future where/when events most likely will occur)

I think I may be picture locked on my senior film. I would love to get some feed back so I guess its off to showing what professors/faculty members I managed not to alienate.



On an entirely different note, today is 09/09/09. It means little of anything but I just felt it was worth pointing out. If only I started this blog at 9:09pm...

Tuesday, September 8, 2009

Good news, and of course, the subsequent bad news that follows

Good News:

Well, folks, the good news is that I now know that people actually read this blog.


The Bad News:

Apparently I can get in trouble with the actual people that read my blog for what I write in here.


The Story:

After a long day of interning after a long night of not sleeping I made my way down to NYU to work on my projects. While I was there I had decided to visit some old teachers and faculty administrators/members that I knew down there, an idea for keeping up good relations with those I respected.

After running into Sam and chatting briefly I made my way to the 9th floor in the hopes of catching Joanne Savio, which, of course she wasn't around so whatever. However, while I was there I thought it would be fun to catch up with Dean Antonio and Patti Pearson (assistant to Dean Antonio) since I've known them for such a long time and have a good amount of respect for them.

I popped into Patti's office and had a not-so-nice surprise awaiting me. Apparently they some how got a hold of my blog, this blog and were very much more than upset about this post, specifically the part that detailed the events of the final night.

I learned from a source whom shall remain nameless since I'm sure someone I don't want reading this is reading this and I would hate to get my source into any trouble, that my blog post was forwarded to Rudy who then sent it over to the film department.

This tells me that whoever ratted me out was either a "friend" of mine on Facebook or has some odd obsession with me because they would have had to google my name and go to the bottom of the second page, skipping over the at least 1 other Matt Chao blog just to reach mine. I have no idea who blew the whistle on me and even though I would like to know, it's not important. If whomever did this was an administrator or teacher or what have you in NYU, I can understand, it in some way shape or form was your job. I would like to put aside the child-ish reaction of saying "whoever turned me in can suck a big fat one," even though they can because they're clearly no friend of mine.

What I would like to discuss here are of a multitude of things. I would like to preface this conversation by saying in no way do I believe I was right in what I did nor do I believe that I should not be punished in some way shape or form by whomever is in charge of administering punishment in this case whether it be the university or the universe itself. I did something wrong and was foolish enough to put it on a public forum for all to see, I'm getting what I deserve.

Ultimately I wonder about the legitimacy of "evidence" such as said previous post that we find on the internet. I have been taught not to trust everything I read on the internet, or, for that matter, not to trust everything I read, so why are corporations and numerous individuals so trusting of incriminating evidence they find in people's blogs?

Something that bothers me is that I could have easily spun my situation into something that seemed as though it was a prank I pulled to test if the university was stalking me. I didn't because, despite the fact that I didn't think of it at the time, it's not the kind of person I am nor that I want to be, I'd rather not lie to keep myself out of trouble. If there's anything I've learned from Sam it's to own up to your mistakes and learn from them. However, the case still stands that I could have spun this easily to make it seem as though it had been all fabricated because it very well could have been. Aside from there being hundreds of false blogs out there (just a handful that we've just now heard of over the news), there is no physical evidence, no tangible evidence that confirms that I actually did what I said I did. People lie all the time, so why is my blog taken as immediate truth? A bragging confession?

Now, I'm not going to deny that I did what I said I did and I'm not going to pretend that I'm not sorry either, because I am, Patti and Sheril have a right to be mad at me, but I think that this internet stalking of employees has got to stop. I think that, even though there is no privacy on the internet, there's a need for additional evidence beyond a blog post because just because everyone can see who say I am doesn't mean who they see is necessarily me. On top of that, it's just fucking creepy.

Obama School Speech AKA More Politics

Read First: In school speech, Obama says education key to country's future

Again, I normally don't comment on politics but this, which has been going on for several weeks now, steps out of the realm of politics and just into the realm of plain stupid. Can someone please explain to me why president Obama making a speech to students telling them to stay in school is such a big controversy? Should he, instead of telling kids that an education is valuable tell our youth that their education is meaningless and their time spent in school is better squandered at home playing video games? Honestly, I don't see what the big deal is.

I realize that there are concerns of Obama trying to use the address to push a partisan agenda, but honestly, is that even a legitimate concern? Aside from the fact that the speech is typed out on the White House's web page for everyone to read, the idea of Obama using an address to students to stay in school to push a partisan agenda is just stupid. Are we really that concerned about our country's leader corrupting the minds of our youth? Really?

Another thing that got me pissed with this issue, and I guess with people in general is this quote I read from this CNN article:

"'The president's speeches tend to be [about] what's wrong with the country and what can we do to fix it,' said Bill Hogsett, a parent from Dallas, Texas. 'I believe this is the greatest country on Earth, and I try to teach that to my children. ... I don't want them hearing that there's a fundamental flaw with the country and the kids need to go forward to fix it.'"

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is what's wrong with this nation.

During my trip with friends to go visit Mr. Holtzman we talked about the degradation of the education system and the blatant dumb-ing down of material being taught so we could make our youth "feel better about themselves". This, quote from Mr. Hogsett is a clear example of the kind of dumb-ing down that we subject the minds of our youth too. We don't want to hear that the nation has issues (which, clearly it does) because it's too difficult for us to accept our country as a great country without it simultaneously being perfect so we ignore the problems its facing. Is that something that should be taught to our kids?

Why would we teach our kids something like that? Rather, since we're not actually teaching them anything, why are we shielding them from a simple truth? Why are we preventing them from thinking about problems? Problems don't solve themselves and ignoring them certainly isn't going to provide solution to any of them. Is that what we do now as a nation? We ignore our problems? When did we become like this?

I'll tell you one thing that I just realized. the movie Idiocracy is wrong. People aren't getting dumber because of genetics (lack of smart people reproducing) people are getting dumber because we're not teaching our kids to think for themselves.

The answer to a problem is worthless unless you can use it to figure out a solution to another problem.

Monday, September 7, 2009

Dream

I've come to the conclusion that cataloging one's dreams is an important step in some creative process so here's the start of it:

Last night I had a dream that I was in a sword fight with Zombie Michael Jackson, only not the one from thriller, this one had a captain (think Captain Crunch only black) hat on, and his arms were bones already. I'm pretty sure I won the fight.

Friday, September 4, 2009

Ramblings 2

I saw Confidence Man again, this time I actually got to see Nick's scenes, which were rather good and quite enjoyable. I want to go see it again but it might be overkill if I go again in such a short time so maybe in a week I'll try to go again and see another show.


On another note, today was Joyeux Noel's last day at PBS. She was the associate producer of Joan Baez: How Sweet the Sound, which will be premiering in October, so congrats to her for finally getting off the project!

This, of course, meant that I went into PBS today, a day that I usually don't go in, but it was a good decision to do so.

Part of me worries that if I continue too far along this path that I'll get stuck in documentary film making, which, although it is something I want to do, it's not what I solely want to do. However, even saying that I immediately remember something a professor of mine, Sharon Bedal (head of programming for the Tribeca Film Festival I believe) told the class and it goes somewhere the lines of this: "No one really keeps you from doing what you want to do, only you keep yourself from doing what you want to do,". So that's that and I shouldn't worry about it and just stop procrastination on developing my 150 ideas and just develop them. (Essentially I should just stop bitching and do the damn work)


Lastly, on my way home, while waiting for my train to begin boarding in Hoboken, I wandered around the train station and noticed, from across the water, the two pillars of light that stand now where the twin towers used to stand. I then came to the realization that 9/11 was 9 years ago and thought of my high school kids, who spoke about Hurricane Katrina with limited knowledge (which confused us until we realized it was 5 years ago and they were 12/13 at the time of the hurricane). I realized that these kids were 7/8 years old the day the towers fell, and that kind of scares me. 9/ll babies will be turning 9 in 6 days (happy birthday?) and 9 years after the fall of the towers, ground zero is STILL just a giant whole in the ground. Am I the only one who thinks there's something wrong with that?

Speaking of 9/11, I need to go finish titles and etc on my Doc. I guess I'll be working on that Tuesday evening.

Thursday, September 3, 2009

The Confidence Man

I made my way over to Pier 40 onto The Lilac to see a production of "The Confidence Man," a play based off of Herman Melville's book of which (the play, not the book) my good friend Nick Feitel played a large part in. This play, however, is not of the typical variety. The closest thing I can seem to think about to compare this to would be a haunted house but I would greatly insult this production in doing so so I will refrain from doing that. If anything, this production was a choose your own adventure of sorts led by six interactive tour guides that we can feel free to abandon at any point in time; I chose to stick with my tour guide.

Despite the wondrous show I had witnessed, in choosing to stick with my tour guide I missed any and all scenes that my good friend Nick had performed in, which was particularly troubling especially since he was who I had come to see. However, from the fact that there were six different tour guides I surmised that, especially I had really enjoyed what I had seen I could potentially come and see it five more times and be treated to five completely different shows, which, is something that I did hope to do. However, upon my return home I looked at the website to reserve my spot for a future showing only to discover, much to my chagrin, that the rest of the performances were all "sold out". I put sold out in quotes because it is a free show, which may be a large factor in why the play is booked full for the rest of the month. However, the website encourages you to show up and put your name on the waiting list anyway so I think I'll go do that tomorrow, and this time I'll make sure I see my friend Nick.


In other news I've been continuing my internship with PBS' American Masters and working with a great director/producer by the name of Gail Levin. She, last year, made a series of short interviews and etc. featured on The New Yorker's website that followed the presidential election, and even though we know who won, it's still very much worth checking out. The series is called the Naked Campaign and it's very good and informative. Plus you get to see cool caricatures of all your favorite politicians (even Hilary and Obama as Homer and Marge Simpson respectively).


On a completely different note, apparently I have an IMDB page now thanks to Nick