Nerd Cake

Moving On...

2008-12-05T07:13:00.000-08:00

I'm now posting at sethberkowitz.blogspot.com

Casimir is posting at www.internetscelebrities.com

Details on our feud are available at www.casandsethfeud.com

Reconstructed documents from Casimir's trash are viewable at www.incriminatenozkowski.com

To be fair, compromising photos of me can be found at www.tubseth.com

All the best!

More tidbits

2008-08-25T14:15:00.000-07:00

I did NOT in fact miss the camp reunion. I am having trouble matching days and dates. Planning a wedding screws with one's wiring.

Network Stars (the Lucky Ghost album) went live on iTunes Music Store this past weekend, much earlier than I expected. I long to get some shows booked, and pray that all the clubs I solicited get back to me post-haste.

Gamefly (from which I rent videogames in order to avoid purchasing expensive, short-lived software that depreciates in value instantly) seems to have gotten confused about which plan I had and shipped me the new Tiger Woods golf game, despite my already having the full alottment of games in-house. This happened last year too, ALSO WITH TIGER WOODS. Strange, is it not?

Our self-cleaning litterbox broke and now I am back to being our felines' shit-servant, without the mechanical assistance I had grown oh-so-used-to. It is amazing how much dung two cats can create in a short period of time.

Oh, y'know... stuff.

2008-08-21T20:31:00.000-07:00

I updated Rounders last night for the first time in what turned out to be... 7 months! I honestly don't know how one-sixtieth of my life went by so quickly, but the last thing I remember is deciding to take a short break from the webcomic in order to finish the Lucky Ghost album. Turned out the break was not so short, mostly due to the myriad complications that can arise when you are trying to get a record finalized.. especially when you are self-releasing and have no idea what you're doing, in essence. I was never quite able to squeeze the volume I desired out of my humble Garageband recordings, so if you have them in your iTunes they might not match up with, say, the latest Radiohead in terms of audio punch and fidelity, but if you are listening to it on its own or popping it in your car CD player, I think it makes a lot of sense unto itself and is satisfying. I am not one of those people that can't stand listening to or watching what they create, and rather embarassingly listen to my own stuff over and over in some strange biofeedback loop where I try and get more familiar with my own brain.

I am on the verge of finishing a project at work that has consumed us for the last 12 months and is still something of a poorly-kept secret. Let's just say that I might be the world's foremost Jewish restorer of Leni Riefenstahl films. There was a lovely (though perhaps premature) celebration this evening to mark the occasion, though I was forced to miss the uptown happy hour reunion of attendees of my old Jewish sleepaway camp from upstate, the legendary Cejwin Camps. I often dream that the place has re-opened, and I'm not sure if I'm a camper or a counselor, and things are never quite right, but it is close enough because I loved the place so much and regret very much skipping the last year the camp was open so I could grow my hair long and play in jam bands with people several years older than myself. I would have been a C.I.T. that year (counselor in training) so it wouldn't have been quite the same, but I still wonder what happened to the self that decided to go back and if he's out there in another dimension I would like to arrange a memory sharing program. He can pick any year post-divergence to draw from. Honestly!

Lucky Ghost - The Future

2008-07-15T07:41:00.000-07:00

Cas suggested I look into using footage from the old Max Fleischer Superman cartoons, since they are in the public domain. It was fun to try and cut around the Superman/Clark/Lois stuff and emphasize the catastrophic nature of the proceedings. The animation in those shorts is really sick. The more I watch them the more detail I appreciate... the physicality of Supes (who seems to struggle more than in later comic book incarnations), the lighting, everything.

Cultural Touchstones

2008-05-21T07:48:00.000-07:00

Last night I not only watched American Idol, but also felt compelled to vote for the first time. I dialed on behalf of monsieur David Cook. Seven times. Which necessitated hitting redial approximately 200 times in order to get through successfully seven measly times. I like David Archuleta fine... and will be happy to check in on him once he has some real life experiences, breaks up with his dad, and stops holding his right palm out and up as he sings, as if waiting for an apple.

The Hazzards' new disc is a must-listen. Three standouts include the afore-posted video, Hot For Hasidim, and Let's Get Boners. They all got in my head and perioded in it.

Always by The Hazzards

2008-05-12T09:31:00.000-07:00

Memory Lane: Robot Edition

2008-04-14T14:24:00.000-07:00

Speaking of A.I.

I told Stanley Kubrick he could use my idea for a robot movie as long as when he died in pre-production, he let me wrap things up.

Instead, the job went to Spielberg who added added wispy aliens and a contrived idea of what the best day ever spent between mother and pseudo-son looks like.

True story: I went back to A.I. to watch it a second time because I thought the problem with the film lay with me. There is a small but potent list of movies with which I have engaged in this transaction all ending with the same conclusion: it is not me.

The list goes:

A.I.
Oh Brother, Where Art Thou

I know there are a couple more but I can't remember them right now. I'll get back to you on that.

Returning to the memory lane theme, Journey of the Robot was my culminating junior film. Here are some things I think of when I watch it:

1) My mom gave me the refrigerator box that became the core of the robot costume.
2) I stayed up all night making that costume. It's not unusual for me to stay up late, working on movie things but I can't think of too many other times when the thing keep me up was craft-related. I'm not much of a carpenter or constructor. But I guess I'm not the worst glue-gun wielder you've ever met.
3) The robot has a mohawk when realized in human form. Much like Spielberg, what once seemed unique and specific now seems like lazy contrivance. Why would a robot dream of having a mohawk?
4) I like when Ted whispers in Ben's ear just before Ben strikes the robot. What does he say?
5) Abby is easily disappointed. Not a good trait in a scientist methinks.
6) I forget what the robot's heart is - something from a stereo I think. Maybe a blender?

Sundays at the Eagle

2008-03-31T08:33:00.000-07:00

This is the Eagle Theater in Jackson Heights. They play Bollywood movies, often with English subtitles. It used to be a XXX theater, and I wish I could say that the physical space felt far removed from all that. I just tell myself that the seats have probably been replaced since then. The first time we went, we saw a film called 36 Chinatown. Here's the opening musical number:

The movie was crazy long, divided by an intermission, and the second half featured a detective whose comic business involved cigarettes that he could never get lit. I liked it so much I bought the soundtrack.

Yesterday, as part of Susan's birthday celebration, we returned to the Eagle Theater for a movie called Race. Here is the ersatz music video that plays underneath the closing credits... sort of my favorite part of these movies, even though the lights are usually on by that point:

The movie was crazy long, divided by an intermission, and the second half featured a detective whose comic business involved eating a different fruit every time you saw him.

What I love about these movies is the complete lack of irony. You can ask the Fisher-Stevens-on-Creatine main actor to unconvincingly fake playing an electric guitar, shirtless and rotating, and he'll say "just tell me where to stand." It's like an army of David Hasslehoffs, all on screen at once.

The real gem of the afternoon was this trailer for Love Story 2050, which will be released this summer:

It's like a mashup of Heartbeeps, A.I., and Mortal Kombat... with dancing! I AM SO THERE.

Memory Lane

2008-03-28T14:15:00.000-07:00

The year: 1997
The place: Poughkeepsie, NY.
The movie: Bar-B-Q

In the original script, it somehow seemed essential that all the action took place on the day John Candy died.

The announcement was supposed to come over the radio at this all-day barbecue, freezing the various subplots while the characters dealt with their conflicting reactions to this oddly sad news.

Thankfully, my film professor - Ken "Stop the Bullshit" Robinson - convinced us it wasn't a strong narrative move.

Curtains

2008-03-19T12:33:00.000-07:00

A mundane dexterity.

A Gurgling Brook

2008-03-16T20:44:00.000-07:00

Technically, it's freshwater.

Subway Dancey Dance Dance

2008-02-26T13:05:00.000-08:00

Dance with a capital D train.

The D train takes about ten minutes to go from Atlantic Ave. to Grand Street.

We got on at Atlantic - all 16 of us - and got right into the dance, taped from 4 different cameras during this one-time ride. Jessie Winograd - the lead dancer - choreographed the movement of the dancers and I drew up a couple basic moves for the passengers. I mostly just wanted to see the dancers moving around and freaking out either in front of oblivious passengers or through the spaces between the oblivious passengers.

The subway stopped at Dekalb where thankfully no one got on - though at 3AM we were optimistic that we wouldn't be disturbed in our travels. It stopped again in the tunnel right before the bridge and then lumbered on over the water. I'd stumbled upon this isolated public space one night coming home from a bar last year, when I lived for a short stretch on the Lower East Side.

I tried to recreate the scenario of that first discovery by staging this on a Saturday night. But heading to the train station with so many people in our party made me nervous that we'd be busted. It wasn't the case. People barely took notice of us waiting en masse for an empty subway car. At around 3am, one - mostly empty - showed up and we seized the chance. If you look on the left of screen there's a fellow sitting in blue who seems truly nonplussed by our efforts. But otherwise, we were able to dance the eff out of that subway car.

Fun Facts:

- If you look closely, two people are reading the last book in the Harry Potter series (one with a cover, one without).
- The door closing in the beginning is actually at Dekalb Ave.
- The music involves a thumb piano brought back from Uganda

Dance arranged by: Jessica Winograd

Shot by: Josh Weisbrot, Casimir Nozkowski, Ian Savage, Kayla Graffam

Music by: Greg Glassman

Passengers:

Simon Astor
Seth Berkowitz
Hannah Bos
Oliver Butler
Dan Engber
Kayla Graffam
Chris Hull
Mary Lawless
Sydney Maresca
Aram Rubenstein-Gillis
Susan Stewart

TV uses bars & tone to make sure all its content matches

2008-02-13T13:49:00.000-08:00

My parents have a color bars rug. Maybe that's where I got the inspiration.

That's an interstitial spot I made for the Independent Film Channel.

They asked me to make a spot that dealt with the same issues as a web series contest they were holding on their website. I could use any footage I wanted but I had to get it done fairly quickly so that and a limited budget ruled out doing a film shoot. I brainstormed a bunch of ideas that dealt with the internet or TV. Most of them had something to do with the strengths of the internet but characterized by language that I thought was too obtuse. Or too random.

So this spot was an attempt to be really direct. I thought about what I prized about the internet but didn't want to make it about why the internet was BETTER than TV. There are too many things like that out in the world. Instead, I just tried to outline the strengths of the internet without denigrating TV.

In the shower one morning, I thought of the color bars approach. Color bars are a great signifier of television that to my mind have not been overused in any shorts I've seen. Plus, I saw really clearly how color bars could be used to great effect on a tight budget. Once you start playing with them in an edit, you can get all Mondrian on their crisp, colorful edges. Originally, I thought the spot would be all color bars but the script got crazier and invited the use of more footage from all over.

In my travels to find readily available images that would work in the spot, I stumbled across a great resource for videomakers. Public domain. There is a lot of stuff - stills and footage - on the internet that is public domain. I found some great old movies that had no copyright which allowed me to download a few shots from them and install them into the spot.

I think a music video made from Max Fleisher Superman cartoons (which are in the public domain) would be the bees knees. I imagine you can't use Superman's likeness because that's separately copyrighted. But there's still lots of villainous scientists, killer robots and smoothly animated Lois Lane legs. Whatever the case, public domain was an exciting element to explore.

In the end, I really liked how the spot came out. It doesn't feel like a promo - my usual paid-for-hire format - and it employs a kind of DIY editing aesthetic. Apart from the motion graphics - supplied by Yoram Benz - it was more about brainstorming and then locating available images that suited the script. I worked with great editors who were very patient and into experimenting and some after effects work too.

Lastly, the music. At the outset, I realized that this needed a track of music that didn't just supply momentum and fill in gaps. I wanted something that took the standard tone and turned it into a melody. That was the only direction I gave Alexander Strung who created something very simple and emotional in my opinion. His band - The Chief Smiles - also did the music that is in my Subway Floor video.

Red Bull made me change some of the language (everytime you hear the word "web", I think it should be "internet") but otherwise IFC and them really let me alone. I also like that I got to stick it to Ted Stevens a little. Have you heard his whole speech attacking net neutrality? It is mind-meltingly ignorant.

"The internet is not a big truck! It's a series of tubes!"

Amen.

Here are the full credits on the spot:

Editors: Karyn Bianco, Eyal Dimant, April Hartstein, David Kuther, Joe Pisch
Music by Alexander Strung
Graphics by Yoram Benz
Voice by Peter McHugh
Video Footage by Ian Savage
Still of Al Gore by Robert Scoble
Still of Oliver the Cat by Kristen Holt Browning and Sam Browning

And Another Thing

2008-02-11T09:54:00.000-08:00

I don't like it when I get a ticket AND a green sticker put on my car's back window.

I feel like it should be one or the other. I know the parking ticket police work independently of the sticker-crazy street cleaners but the two penalties seem like overkill for an infraction that inconveniences no one except the giant sweepers' ability to swirl about the dust of the gutters. Would you notice the difference if a street cleaner serviced a street or didn't? I suspect you would not. Does it have vacuum capabilities? It looks like all it does is brush the dirt and grit into the center of the road for cars to naturally disperse to other gutters. Maybe a moving about of dirt and grit is all we require for the illusion of clean streets to be maintained.

Putting the sticker on the window at the edge of your blind spot is also just barely dangerous. If I felt the need to sticker up an offender, I'd put it on the body of the car. That way, it serves the same scarlet letter purpose but without the lane-changing obstruction.

Or better yet, I'd just think to myself that the $45 dollar fee was punishment enough for not being able to find a legal spot in your heavily trafficked neighborhood. I always assumed the alternate side of the street parking rules were really put into effect for the parking ticket revenue generation. Maybe I'm underestimating the effect of good street cleaning. Maybe it's just the month of peeling away that green sticker talking.

It is also possible that these are small fees to pay (all the tickets and the stickers) for having a car amidst such a wealth of public transportation. I have my car here so that I can better make movies and carry around gear but I do certainly use it to avoid the late night G train ride when I don't feel like waiting on a platform. The G isn't even that bad.

New York City - You're Welcome!

2008-02-01T11:20:00.000-08:00

In January, I fucked up!

I got 4 parking tickets. That is a record for me.

It is not as frustrating as the month where a truck or similarly wide-bodied assailant knocked off my driver's side, side-view mirror and then I got TWO tickets for "missing equipment" sandwiched around a trip to a mechanic who kept forgetting to order the replacement mirror.

It is more frustrating than the time I went on vacation with my car parked legally for the six days I was away only to return to find the car towed a few blocks away to a new spot (a parade that wasn't posted anywhere sprung up on Graham Ave. and necessitated involuntary car-movings) on a street with street-cleaning scheduled before I got back. I explained my position in the email complaint field of the nyc parking ticket site and my ticket got blown away.

It is also not completely undeserved. For one of my tickets, I alternate side of the street parked for the three hours that the Thursday side was illegal (11am - 2pm) and didn't get down to move my car until 2:03pm. Those three minutes cost me $115 for double-parking. I appreciated the discipline of the parking ticket writer who noted that s/he wrote the ticket at 2:01. I imagine her standing there at 1:59, looking up and down the block and savoring the feeling of impending municipal revenue generation.

For another ticket, I parked 12-14 feet from a hydrant. I thought to myself: I think you have to be over 10 feet away from a hydrant to be legally parked. That was for another $115.

In my old neighborhood I used to park at the corner of Manhattan and Withers, right between the actual corner and a hydrant about 25 feet from the corner. My car was never more than 10 feet away and I never got a ticket. Standards for tickets change in different neighborhoods. In Williamsburg, where it is easier to park, they support your shady, subjective calculations. In Carroll Gardens where I live now, they are trying to make my mind melt out of my ears.

My last two tickets were of the smaller more reasonable 45 dollar amount - both for being in the way of the weekly street cleaning in my neighborhood. The thing that makes these tickets so special is that I got them because I had no other option. If you wait until 1am to park in my neighborhood, you will literally find nothing for a 15 block radius. As it is, I usually have to drive over to the fringe of Red Hook to find a spot if it's in any way late.

These 45ers were incurred because I literally didn't know where to go to find a spot once I'd passed the 1am time limit for reasonable parking. So I parked in illegal spots down streets I hoped the parking ticket police would not travel. Sometimes I get away with these illegal spots and sometimes I do not. In January, I did not.

There used to be a block of Columbia Street in Redhook where someone had knocked down the sign telling you illegal times to park. But The Man put the sign back up. I would like one day to be the kind of guy who both knows how to knock down signs and get away with it. Do I need a blowtorch? Jackhammer? Or just more natural strength?

Anyway - in February I've turned over a new leaf. No new tickets. Last night I went two blocks further into Red Hook to where I found a legal spot. It took me 22 minutes to walk back to my apartment.

Urine Nation

2008-01-28T18:00:00.000-08:00

A full bladder can make the city into a cruel mistress.

That's why the Internets Celebrities have created this simple guide to urinating stress-free when you're far from the comforts of your own home.

Enjoy!

With No Ado, The Nines Take the Stage.

2008-01-27T20:39:00.000-08:00

This was the rap band I was in while enrolled at Vassar College and for several different incarnations in New York City post-graduation.

With No Ado was an odd song in our catalogue. It was always played in the middle of a show. It was neither a finisher nor a jumpstarter. It was one of the sweeter songs we played and emblematic of our ongoing quest for unconventional structure. It goes verse bridge verse transition quick chorus epic finish. I'm not even sure you can call that penultimate part a chorus but I do repeat the words in chorusy fashion.

The performance is from our last show at Vassar. We're all amped, invite up two special guests and play through pretty much our whole repertoire up to that point (no MC Had to Flip It nor Mic Hit Me In The Head or now that I think of it, no Mortal Kombat, Jazzy Song or What Do We Rap About - so I guess a lot of songs were missing. Butterman!)

What's crazy is that was 9.5 years ago.

I remember that evening very vividly. We didn't play all the time senior year but I think we recognized the significance of closing out our college tenure in grand form. While I'm definitely a nostalgic and prone to fond memories, I think it's also a symptom of missing both playing with The Nines and freestyling in general.

I would never have guessed it could happen to me but let me be the first to report, you can definitely fall out of practice when it comes to freestyle rapping. Back in the day, I think I developed the skill because of our dearth of rehearsal time. Playing with such ill musicians who didn't need to rehearse left me scrambling for a way to bring text to the performance despite not having time to memorize it. After a while, I got hooked on the epiphany feeling of it.

When you get something right in a freestyle, it's a very in-sync-with-the-universe moment. I think I'll upload some more songs soon. Go Nines.

Eat fish, take pictures, make money

2008-01-13T19:12:00.000-08:00

I went to Venice last summer to check out my dad's work in the Biennale.

He's number 27 there.

That's at the entrance to his room in the Italian Pavilion where a bunch of his paintings were hanging.

It was a family vacation which I hear can be a drag for some people. Not me. My folks know too many good restaurants to ever be a drag to travel with. At the very least, the good eating takes the edge off any familial friction.

They recommended a famous fish spot in Venice called Corte Sconta which they went to like three days in a row. I finally got it together to go for lunch one day with my friends Gaby and Milena. The meal was dope. So dope in fact, I had to take some pictures of the interior:

And the exterior:

I'd just gotten a nice tiny digital camera (the Panasonic Lumix - 7.1 mp) and was capturing anything that struck me. I'd also just started a flickr account.

When I got back home, I put up the pics and felt the way I usually feel when I post something to the internets - satisfied. Something that had been recreational now felt productive to boot just because people could look at it. This can be a misleading feeling because posting isn't good work in and of itself. But too often, I pat myself on the back for some misconstrued feeling of accomplishment felt just for the chance of reaching an audience.

Well, this time, I combined a misleading feeling with a misleading lesson about posting.

A week or two after I posted those Corte Sconta pictures, I got a message from Food Arts Magazine. They wanted to pay me $200 to publish my exterior image in their October issue, in a spread on Venetian Cuisine. Ever hear of Food Arts? Me neither! But I said hell yes, emailed them the high res file and got a check from them a month or so later. My picture accompanied a two line characterization of the restaurant as indeed a good place to eat especially if you let the chef do the choosing for you (like I did).

Achieving an initial misleading feeling of productivity had yielded me the price of my digital camera.

Then, a few months later, I got a note from a website that wanted to use my interior photo for their travel guide website.

Ever hear of Schmap?

Me neither. But I said hell yes, waited for it to get approved, saw it approved about a week ago and now my documentation of a good meal in Venice lives even more in infamy than it did before.

If you ever go to Venice, I recommend eating at Corte Sconta and taking some pictures.

Them Lonely Bottles

2008-01-07T15:58:00.000-08:00

Recently, I went on an empty D train and videotaped 50 empty glass bottles rolling around the subway car.

Before I could do that though, I had to buy 50 bottles of mostly Snapple with some other brands and genres (note the jar of peanuts) thrown in for visual variation.

I needed empty bottles though.

So I began the very dubious and guilt-inducing task of pouring out fresh bottles of Snapple. Why didn't I have a container to save the various flavored teas and Banana drinks? Because I like to keep my kitchen clutter-free. Also, I am still a bad cook and don't think to make things like pitchers of ice tea.

Still, I did have one container.

Not the milk. The one to the left of the milk.

Sadly, it was only enough to fit the contents of 10 bottles. I had some friends drink about 3 more bottles worth. But the remaining 37 snapples got maybe a brief sip before being poured down the drain. I'm not proud of this feat. Nor am I proud of the pot of blended snapple that resides in my refrigerator - so blended, it transcends the term flavor.

It is the un-flavor. It is what happens when you mix banana drink with orangeade and diet peach tea.I predict it would be good with alcohol. But I am afeared.

The video of all those bottles rolling around was going to go on the end of this video:

But I thought it took away from the documentary-like feel that gives that video a consistent tone. I've been sitting on this footage for 2 years. I shot it originally with Ian Savage on an epic 4 hour journey to Canarsie on the L train, switching to the F, and looping out to Coney Island and back. We watched 2 bottles bop around the car which really meant watching them sit still for long stretches of time before just barely catching them roll into someone's foot or a pole.

It's hard to document natural occurrences. But rewarding once you start editing.

The song is by The Chief Smiles - friends of mine from Kerhonkson, NY. It's called "The Dance Went On Too Long." If live music is more your bag, check out the concert footage I shot of them at Arlene's Grocery about a year ago:

Big props to Ben Fried, Dallas, Jessie W, Sydney and Will for the supreme bottle management and subway wrangling.

Top Ten 2007

2008-01-02T15:34:00.000-08:00

I feel like there's been a backlash against top tens this year - especially because so many blogs are partaking. I don't see the reason for the hate. Either you read a top ten and get something out of it or you skip reading that post. Shucks, I didn't hear or see most of the albums/movies that came out this year. But I did catch a bunch of good ones and if you haven't caught wind of these and at all trust my taste, than you've made a netflix, torrent or acquisition discovery.

I wish I had a better discovery matrix for new music. I usually get to albums long after they've appeared - the exceptions being the odd rap albums which those more connected than I make available to me. It's not that I want to beat the rush and look more knowing. It's just that I find myself impressionable when it comes to music. When too many people shit on something, I find myself not really giving it my attention. I'm trying to cultivate the naive objectivity that makes for surprise and true analysis. Till then, I can best construct my list based on enjoyable repeat listening and pretend I can trust myself.

These are in order.

Top Ten 2007 Albums I heard

Kanye West – Graduation
Arcade Fire – Neon Bible
Pinback – Autumn of the Seraphs
Wu-Tang Clan – 8 Diagrams
X-Clan – Return from Mecca
Bishop Allen – Charm School
Prodigy – Return of the Mac
Jay-Z – American Gangster
Fountains of Wayne – Traffic & Weather
El-P – I’ll Sleep When You’re Dead

Honorable Mention

Blu & Exile – Below The Heavens
Aesop Rock – None Shall Pass
Ghostface – Big Doe Rehab
UGK – Underground Kingz
White Stripes – Icky Thump

Every year, people kill the past year for its short supply of quality films. I always fought this. That kind of thinking I generally chalk up to lazy, dare-you-to-impress-me viewing. I also hold that most people don't see enough movies to qualify the statement "a bad year for movies." Something like 500 movies come out of Hollywood or at least appear in genuine movie theaters every year. In a good year, I probably see 50 - 70. And that was back when I was multiplexing. This year, I probably went to the theater 30 times and didn't double-up even once.

Despite my dearth of real theater-going experience I found myself feeling the urge to say this was a bad year for movies. It was intoxicating to be so dismissive for the first time in my life. Luckily for my overall sense of self, the last few months provided a whole bunch of great movies with what looks like at least a few more gems (There Will Be Blood, Atonement, Chipmunks - psych!) and I feel no more desire to be so quit of this year's movies. It feels like years since Ratatouille came out but damn that movie alone should give 2007 a pass.

Also, when I went to the movies, I tried to ensure that every time I set foot in a theater would afford me a good use of my time. I don't like this attitude. Again, like the albums, it affords little surprise. And when the movie disappoints, it can feel really depressing. I'm Not There and I Am Legend (not the worst movie but a demoralizing overall picture) put me in bad moods I could still feel three days later. How do you alter your expectations? I think it has something to do with productivity. When I am producing my own shorts and finishing work, I feel like I've earned the right to roll the dice on a bad movie-going experience. When I'm being holiday lazy, a bad movie stings.

So for 2008, I resolve to lower my expectations, seek out more surprise and not mind the odd bad picture.

These are also in order.

Top Ten 2007 Movies I saw

Ratatouille – Brad Bird
The Savages – Tamara Jenkins
Juno – Jason Reitman
Once – John Carney
Michael Clayton – Tony Gilroy
You Kill Me – John Dahl
Eastern Promises – David Cronenberg
Sicko – Michael Moore
The Host – Bong Joon-ho
Knocked Up – Judd Apatow

Honorable Mention

Rescue Dawn - Werner Herzog
Sweeney Todd – Tim Burton
American Gangster – Ridley Scott
No Country For Old Men – Brothers Coen
Sunshine - Danny Boyle

I enjoyed No Country - especially the first two thirds. But it does grind you down like few movies. I really like what Andrew Sarris in the NY Observer had to say on the subject:

"IN CASE YOU were wondering, yes, I saw the Coen brothers’ No Country for Old Men. This year it makes up my entire category of Movies Other People Liked and I Didn’t. It is simply too nihilistically evil-worshipping for my taste, though I can’t fault the sterling performances of Javier Bardem, Josh Brolin, Tommy Lee Jones and Woody Harrelson."

Nihilistically, evil-worshipping indeed. But still better than Oh Brother Where Art Thou. IMHO.

Wintery Mix

2007-12-16T14:15:00.000-08:00

I don't think there's anything more unpleasant than cold rain.

Some people don't like the freezing cold. Others swear against the blaring heat.

For my money, a cold rain is the most demoralizing ammunition in Nature's arsenal of non-disaster themed production (sandstorms: jury still out).

But between a cold rain and a wintery mix, lies a fine line. If a few less degrees propel you across the line into a wintery mix, demoralization gives way to endorphin-assisted inspiration.

For lack of practice, confidence and aerodynamic board (my yellow alfred e. neuman themed board was twice the weight of your basic deck), I was a terrible skateboarder. I also never got my surf on. The only gliding I've ever done was on two feet, usually on ice with and without skates. Last night was a good night for gliding down an unblemished Brooklyn street.

After warming up above, I really nailed one.

I know. The perfect blend of form and momentum. What.

Pass the camera mic

2007-12-12T14:16:00.000-08:00

To camera mic or shotgun mic or lavalier or boom, that is the question.

Recently, I had the opportunity to record a cypher with three unsigned but very deserving rappers on North 14th St. in Brooklyn. For the sake of convenience and quickness, I chose to camera mic.

It was done to promote a live show featuring these and other rappers that the Internets Celebrities were hosting. We wanted to see if the internets would respond to a youtube "ad" for a rap show in the real world.

Then, we dropped a second promotional video in which the same three underground rappers bowl with the Internets Celebrities.

These two clips were filmed with a 1-chip miniDV camera and the rhymes were spit right to camera mic - an aesthetic befitting rappers whose skills I think speak for themselves. Lights in the bowling alley would have been immensely helpful. But the streetlight that illuminates the rhyme sessions outside is more than enough in my opinion. I like it when shoots are that simple - when the event you're documenting does not need polish save crisp, clean edits and bold, straightforward type. The aesthetic affords mobility and saves time.

I used to fear the camera mic. It couldn't possibly produce working sound. Ambience would swallow up any elocution. I have discovered that is not the case. Yes, there are MUCH better ways to record sound but in the end, in a video that just has to get done and that you're making yourself, stressing over hiss and background noise is counterproductive. There are some videos that just have to get done and some events - like a cypher - that may actually benefit from an all around simplified vibe.

And there are some events that benefit from looking and sounding dope.

For something prettier and appropriately so, check out the actual show which was shot by Terrence Elenteny with two much nicer HDV cameras. Plus, the audio came out of the soundboard.

When you need to get it done, don't be afraid to go raw. If you've got the gear and the time to make it look good, by all means give yourself the best chance to apply the proverbial sunblock against the harsh light of a youtube compression.

Every video that strikes a blow against the misconception that live rap always sounds awful is very welcome in my opinion.

Oh Word will be dropping a live video of each rapper from the show over the course of the week. All quality.

Echo

2007-12-01T11:59:00.001-08:00

I thought it would be frightening to see my heart beat in almost real time.

And it was!

But it was also fascinating. As my doctor puts it, the heart is the perfect machine. Listening to her talk, you can see why she became a cardiologist. She is generally smitten with this most important of muscles. When she suggested I get the echocardiogram - to investigate a possible physiological source of high blood pressure - she said as a filmmaker, I needed to see this. She even wound up holding the camera so that I didn't miss any of the details of my test when I was on the treadmill or running from the treadmill to the ultrasound area.

Everything turned out fine (I just needed to cut back on some stress in my life) and I got to see something I'd never seen before. Now, while I can watch the full twenty minutes of me on the treadmill in all my potbellied glory, I figured I'd spare you the bulk of the procedure and just serve up the highlights - with a score from Greg Glassman.

By The Hammer Of THOR!!!

2007-11-18T11:26:00.000-08:00

It's Sunday, and I am at work, all alone. It is fun to pee at work with the bathroom door open, however.

I stopped by the Big Apple Comic-Con this morning. After three circuits of the joint and an hour-and-a-half of searching for something, anything, or anyone to connect with, I left. It is a depressing event. Walter Koenig (Chekov from Star Trek) was there, however. He was sipping something intently from a styrofoam cup. He is a little cutie. There are lots of 2nd-tier celebrities, tons of stuff to buy, and many artists, though none that I cared about. I'm trying to avoid clutter, so buying stuff was out of the question.

Allergies

2007-11-14T13:29:00.000-08:00

Jewmongous

2007-11-09T07:54:00.000-08:00

I avoided Michael Chabon's latest, The Yiddish Policemen's Union, for a time out of allegiance to what might be my favorite book of all time, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay. How could it compare? An idle moment at the library near the new release stack led me to pick up TYPU and check it out before thinking, and now I find it's about two of my favorite things, Jews and alternate history. It's a modern day detective story, set in a remote section of Alaska where the Jews have been allowed to settle after the collapse of Israel in 1948. Temporarily allowed to settle, that is. There's lots of chess, and it is very good, though not in the sweeping, romantic way that Kavalier & Clay is. But I recommend.

Ever since throwing my hat into the webcomic ring (updating twice a week on Mondays and Fridays now, mind you), I've been checking out a lot of others. The best thing I've seen is, without a doubt, Vulcan & Vishnu. Check it out.
On a political note, I know Ron Paul might be bat-shit crazy and apparently has some support from hate groups, but I so hope for a Obama vs. Paul race as opposed to the Clinton vs. Giuliani contest that the press has all but ordained. Hearing Paul extoll the virtues of and rail against the transgressions upon our Constitution almost makes me willing to risk a Dept. of Education-hating Libertarian as president. In the venn diagram of priorities between he and a modern congress, you might be able to push through merely the benefits (a sane international policy, some reigning in of spending) with few of the detriments (i.e. abortion ban, dismantling of all social programs).

VH1 Hip Hop Honors Total Fucking Access

2007-11-08T10:30:00.000-08:00

First you get the money.
Then you get the power.
Then you get the press credentials!

Once a year, hip hop gets a red carpet and this time around, the Internets Celebrities felt the need to grace it with their presence. In this video, we cover every square inch of the VH1 Hip Hop Honors Awards show: From the stairways to the press room, from the free cold snacks to the free hot food, from backstage to the main stage, get your TOTAL FUCKING ACCESS PASS with the Internets Celebrities and go deep on a great night for Hip Hop.

Internets Celebrities: Dallas Penn and Rafi Kam
Director: Casimir Nozkowski
Camera/Editing: Terrence Elenteny
Original Music: Jon Davis

Chea to Eskay for the press access!

Quit While You're Ahead

2007-11-06T11:54:00.001-08:00

It's day three of my unemployed adventure. It's been five days since I actually stopped being officially employed but only three business days have gone by in that timespan. So far, I'm just processing the new feeling of a summer vacation following the longest semester of my life. Like any academic semester, there were a ton of great things that happened and a huge amount of self-improvement. The summer break I'm in right now feels earned and that feeling is rare for me. I never deserve a break.

Certainly, I can't pat myself on the back too much though. It's a privilege to be able to stop the daily grind for someone else's company and switch gears solely to my own enterprises. I hope I honor my opportunity.

My first epiphany is that I miss my co-workers. I've worked with wonderful people who I look forward to harassing from the comfort of my new corner office (read: the tiny room in my apartment to the left of my bedroom). It's going to be hard to manufacture the daily stimulation from the creative energy present in my former office.

One thing that's a definite positive change: I now have a window. Having spent most of the last four years in windowless edits, it is soul-transforming to have sunlight lightly grazing at least one side of my face once more.

Blah Blah - let's get to work:

Blood Brothers Episode 3

I haven't actually seen Amistad.

Blood Brothers Episode 4

Nothing against Scientology, but did you have to ensnare Beck?

Keep your eyes peeled for Episode 5 in which a vampire gives birth to a mummy.

Brush/Paste 2.0

2007-10-26T14:03:00.000-07:00

My dentist said if I had to choose between brushing my teeth and flossing, I should go with the latter. Evidently, brushing is more of a broad, easy gesture towards clean teeth while flossing is the surgical strike that demonstrates true enamel commitment. I've even heard that regular flossing adds an average of 3 years to your life (googling that fact yields little results) but whether or not this is true, it does keep the post-cleaning spaces between your teeth wide open.

Whatever. Fuck flossing. I'm doing it. I'm not enjoying it.

Tooth-brushing? Another story. That, I'm enjoying immensely. It turns out there is a trick to immensely enjoying your tooth-brushing experience:

Buy more toothpaste!

Lest you think I am a plant for the toothpaste companies of America, I do not recommend any one brand. Also, if you can steal it, I think you should steal it. I'm merely suggesting, by whatever means, having more toothpaste on hand.

When I moved into my new apartment, I went out to the neighborhood Rite-Aid and bought a healthy-looking toothpaste. The baking soda component was fine for a week or two but then it started to taste like baking soda. Brushing became a chore. I don't like it when something I have to do in the morning and revisit later in the evening is a drag. Sadly, I was raised with the mindset that you buy one tube of toothpaste at a time and use it all the way up until it's done. So week after week, I would use this crappy, pasty toothpaste and silently bemoan the fact that it wasn't even halfway done. It felt like months went by before I started rolling up the bottom.

Around this time, I realized something I tend to realize from time to time but then promptly forget: I am a grown-up. And as a card-carrying member in the grown-up social club, I am allowed to do whatever the eff I want. Like... buy lots of different flavors of toothpaste (healthy and non-healthy) and stack them in an artistically pleasing manner between my two black sinks (I have a funny apartment).
Not only will you appreciate the bevy of possibilities awaiting you every morning and every night, you will spend no more money than you would have anyway. You're merely front-loading your toothpaste budget.

If you can haggle, maybe you're even in a position to ask for a wholesale price.

Anyway, I threw out that original Baking soda toothpaste and visited my neighborhood deli to buy 4 new tubes of toothpaste. One Aquafresh. One Crest. And two Colgates - whitening and mint. Since then I've accumulated three more tubes and have them all in heavy rotation. My favorite is the Pepsodent which has always been a very pleasant flavor. But I most appreciate the bright pink/purple color of the candy-flavored toothpaste my girlfriend bought me. It is not tubed shaped and is almost definitely as bad for my teeth as rinsing with Dr. Pepper might be - despite its micro-whitening strips.

Achieve a more fulfilling brushing experience by allowing yourself constant choice. Exert control over the mundane.

How Blood Looks in HD

2007-10-23T14:02:00.000-07:00

Do these vampires know that their apartment was once a synagogue? It's true.

EPISODE 1:

I haven't ever cheated at Battleship. But I am proud to say that I've turned over a letter in Scrabble to provide an extra blank square. I got caught but it was worth it for the madness I caused a self-described "unbeatable" Scrabble champion.

EPISODE 2:

These are the first movies we made in which Matt Elkind employed his P2 HD camera. While youtube doesn't do the quality justice, you are indeed looking at HD (compressed four times over to arrive at the pixelated version you see before you), a form of shooting I was initially skeptical would be practical for our uses. For an embracer and sometimes craver of new technologies, I am sometimes short-sighted. I think my fear was that HD could only be watched on HD televisions with HD DVD players and how would we even produce an HDCAM version of the final product to dub to DVD.

In fact, HD just really means you're dealing with bigger, higher quality quicktimes. Even everything being 16:9 didn't end up being a stopping point. You can just reformat in Final Cut to make it letterboxed and any aspect ratio you want. The lesson here is that with simple editing software and some form of compression (I like quicktime pro though at work we use sorenson squeeze), you can make something as awe-inspiring as HD any size and shape you want. I was thinking in film to video terms when really, you just have to expand your video mindset. It is no longer about the transfer of media, it is about the export. There are different HDs if you want to make it complicated for yourself (720p, 1080i, 1080p, etc) but they're just describing different sizes/presentations of HD video.

My question is: which presentation is the best for shooting? Which one is the best for watching? A lot of people have different opinions. Is the world better for having different options or should we have a standard by now? Maybe the deal is just that we DO have options. Nothing to do but choose what's more convenient until one format asserts itself.

Meanwhile, I'm just happy to see HD accurately capture a vampire hunter's bloody tampon in a martini glass.

Episodes 3 and 4 coming VERY SOON.

You gotta fight for your (copy)right to party!

2007-10-12T11:39:00.000-07:00

There are a lot of copyright puns to be made when it comes to addressing the subject of intellectual property vs. the internet.

- It's time to (copy)right the ship!
- (copy)Right on!
- They'll read you the (copy)riot (pronounced without the uh) act!

I could go on and the puns could get worse but I think you might be better served by checking out a very thoughtful post written by Internet Celebrity Rafi Kam over at InternetsCelebrities.com where he brings up a lot of current issues regarding copywritten material, ownership and "stealing" information (and makes a good copyright pun himself).

How does copyright and free information affect you? Well, I will tell you how it affects me. Two days ago, The Internets Celebrities posted a video to youtube we shot at the VH1 Hip Hop Honors show of a Tribe Called Quest tribute performance. The video was pulled by Youtube who cited Viacom as the concerned entity being infringed upon.

That same day, I downloaded Radiohead's new album for free.

Then, I watched a podcast of the Brian Lehrer show at CUNY TV where he and a small panel spent 10 minutes dissecting and talking about the Internets Celebrities movie, Bodega - which his TV show had lifted from youtube without telling us. I found out Brian Lehrer was going to be looking at our video when my dad, listening to his show on NPR, heard him say he'd be looking at "a funny movie about Bronx Bodegas" on his CUNY show that evening.

So information is getting exchanged all over the place. What do we owe each other to take that information and use/read/enjoy/comment on/watch it? I'm not sure but I think the first step is chastising Viacom for just trying to shut down the conversation.

Meanwhile, the (copy)right move is reading Rafi's post.

He also wrote an excellent post about editing.

Thomas Nozkowski on a hike

2007-10-09T13:10:00.000-07:00

My parents and I often go hiking in the Catskills. My mom sat this one out I think because she was working on her own artwork. So while she was working on it, my dad and I got to talking about it.

As my dad says midway through the video, this isn't a set-up. This is an actual rustic junkyard with a lot of old farm/construction equipment. When you go hiking as much as my dad does, you stumble across strange outposts where people either once lived or once worked. It's not always clear why they abandoned their equipment so far from a road but a lot of the time, what I think of as a path in the woods was once a busy thoroughfare. This particular junkyard which I find much more pleasant if not a bit spookier than most junkyards, is on the way to Hidden Pond, a swimmable lake through yonder upstate New York woods.

Return to the Future - Part 2

2007-09-28T08:16:00.000-07:00

This is the second part of The Future:

Things I remember about the second day of shooting on The Future are mostly obscured by the horrifyingly low temperatures we encountered at the rec center. Though it had been chilly by the caves, the temperature dipped far far down when we concluded our weekend's shoot. I think my parents made us meatballs for lunch and when we called it for a break to eat, the heat in the cars couldn't come on fast enough. Even with high-tech thermal underwear, it was a struggle to speak without a quivering voice.

Hardship begets bonding on film shoots. Whether it's the cold of The Future or the thunderstorm that swooped down on us when we shot Saltwater, I feel lucky to have gotten through those hardships, creating a vivid, common experience with my collaborators.

Rounders at Ten

2007-09-25T11:54:00.000-07:00

My alternate-history, turn-of-the-century sports opera Rounders is now ten episodes young.

I'm updating every Monday, at least until I can speed up the process, both at my site and at Komikwerks, which has picked it up as part of its online showcase.

I feel like I'm skirting dangerously close to copyright infringement by drawing Chipper as sort of a Jewish Superman, but what the hey. Tom Strong is basically Supes with graying temples.

Cereal is Dope.

2007-09-25T08:33:00.000-07:00

To this day, I can't buy sweet cereals without feeling massive health guilt. But maybe I just can't tolerate the racism.

My parents never let me have sweet cereals. Instead, it was Cheerios for life. That or barely sweet variations were on the menu when my mom was groggily making me breakfast on frigid mornings before school. When I got old enough to control my own breakfast destiny, I stuck with the Cheerios but added a spoonful or two of sugar to the concoction. The Cheerios became just a vessel. Your brain and your parents think you are still eating a healthy cereal but you've snuck in some sweetness that your spoon can mine with the dull grain matter.

Expectations

2007-09-19T04:40:00.000-07:00

I don't think anyone sits down to watch The Fast & The Furious 3: Tokyo Drift expecting to like it. Even people who liked the first two Fast & The Furiouses don't viscerally anticipate satisfaction. People who like racing might trick themselves into expecting joy but it's more out of obligation than anything else.

I don't expect to like third installments in franchises with loose definitions of continuity. I don't expect to know people who expect to like movies where product placement is a foregone and vivid conclusion.

So you can understand a certain amount of incredulity on my part upon discovery of my parents not only watching but LIKING The Fast & The Furious 3: Tokyo Drift.

Just after arriving at and flopping into a chair in my parents' living room in upstate New York, I asked them - avid cinephiles - if they'd seen anything good recently. As it turned out, they had seen something "good" that very night just before I arrived. In fact, it was "arresting" and "visually sublime" too.

"Have you seen The Fast & The Furious 3: Tokyo Drift?" my dad asked.
"Have I seen The Fast & The Furious 3: Tokyo Drift?" Had I heard right?
"It's good," my mom noted from her perch on the couch. "Yes, very good," added my dad.
I blinked. "The Fast & The Furious 3: Tokyo Drift?!?" I repeated.
"No," I definitively answered.
"Oh, you really should," one of them declared with confidence.
"Shut up," I replied, sensing a joke at my expense.
"I think it's on again in a few minutes." My dad started leafing through the listings for the multiple HBOs on their DirectTV. "HBO West. In 2 minutes."
"Did you know people race like that in Tokyo?" my mom asked, more confirming her knowledge of a racing subgenre I was not yet hip to. "Do you know what drifting is?"

In short, I watched all of The Fast & The Furious 3: Tokyo Drift (saying the full title at all times is expected) later that evening. Any doubts I had about my parents' feelings for The Fast & The Furious 3: Tokyo Drift evaporated after they rewatched its first act with me.

"See? Isn't this great? That's great. Look at that shot!" My dad could barely contain his excitement. "This storyline kind of has to go." But he's still a realist.

The story is fairly goofy.
The characters are poorly developed. Even Bow Wow FKA L'il Bow Wow.
It is completely worth watching. It mostly has to do with the visual quality of the racing scenes, the way Tokyo is photographed, the different manners of car fetishization and the way it's paced - moving the action along at a good, unpretentious clip.
It is fun to watch.

These days, I don't expect to like most movies that come out. I get worked up over a couple new releases that appear in my wheelhouse but cynically and inappropriately feel that my time is too valuable to waste on movies with a chance of being less than perfect. I think this is symptomatic of an overall less hopeful viewpoint I've been employing as a means to being lazy and not risking smirking contentment for the chance of seeing something that exceeds expectations.

When I was younger, I had the reputation of liking most movies, of at least having a hard time saying anything negative about a moviemaker. I don't want to give up my ability to be critical in a sophisticated and constructive manner but maybe it would be good for me to return to a more naive, forgiving vantage point. What my parents illustrated for me is the value in not being a slave to my expectations, in not assuming that presentation or context necessarily guarantees worthlessness. It is good to take a risk and it is good to be surprised.

My expectations for The Fast & The Furious 4: Ready! Set! Greenland! have yet to be determined.

Return to The Future - Part 1

2007-09-17T12:23:00.000-07:00

Have a look at The Future.

We made this movie a ways back - say 2003 - in the early part of the year when upstate New York was still very snowy. I had been wanting to make a movie using the cement mines in Rosendale as a backdrop. They are majestic and intimidating and in retrospect, very dangerous places to shoot videos. Giant icicles hung from the roof of the cavernous mine and occasionally just dropped down onto the rubble that had preceded the icicle's descent with a fall of its own.

We shot during the day and stayed at my parents' house in the next town over. At night, we made a second movie, thinking that the right way to honor such an excellent, unique location would be to overextend our limited time there. The upside to shooting there in the dark was you couldn't tell if there were icicles above you. But really, we were in a part of the cave where at least in the morning, there hadn't been anything hanging above us.

Needless to say, we got out with our lives.

Film Everything

2007-09-11T09:57:00.000-07:00

Even if you don't agree with the film everything philosophy, I recommend trying something like this:

Filming yourself in such a prone state distracts from an unpleasant procedure.

Big shoutout to my dentist and hygienist who I've been going to since I've had teeth. When I was young, I went through a cavity phase, accumulating 12 total fillings in the process. I asked my dentist once if there was anything I could do to forestall future novocaine-infused drillings. His reply: "No. Your teeth are angled in a such a way that you will end up with cavities." To be honest, I bet the interaction was a bit more grey and could have been helped by heeding their request for more flossing.

I didn't floss then but I'm starting now. I promised my hygienist I'd do it every other night. As you can see, she is not to be messed with on promises.

How We Say Hello in the Workplace

2007-08-29T12:44:00.000-07:00

I like where I work. Good people abound. And those good people are very considerate and very engaging on a day-to-day basis.

I've never REALLY worked in any other offices so I don't know for sure how it is over there in YOUR cubicleverse. But here, despite all these good souls, there are some relationships that can not be sustained. There is a certain pressure that underlies a daily greeting and understandably, enthusiasm has a tendency to wane.

To chart this melancholy experience, Dan Engber, Matt Lima and I have created a website to walk you through the loss of affection and diminishing familiarity that occasionally creeps into one's everyday work existence.

It is called THE HELLO CURVE and it features Maura Madden as Subject A.

Big shout out to Matt Lima for the excellent retro design that makes me wish this was a video game I could play.

End of Summer Video Update

2007-08-27T13:14:00.000-07:00

I have this tendency to not always let my friends know when I make a new video. I know what a drag it can be to get endless announcements about new projects that someone is working on. I usually err on the side of not burdening people close to me with every new video I make.

But at the same time, I want my friends to see the things I've been making.

So, without further ado, I present some links and short descriptions:

1) The Internets Celebrities website:

- Dallas Penn, Rafi Kam and myself have been churning out some videos for about a year now along with good people Ian Savage on the camera, Terrence Elenteny on the editing, agent B on the graphics and Matt Lima on the music. We've picked up a lot of steam this summer and have lately dropped a lot of videos including:

2) Outdoor Concert DOs and DONTs:

Dallas and Rafi offer some tips on maximizing your outdoor concert fun times.

3) Brooklyn Hip Hop Festival: The Lost Tapes:

Dallas and Rafi finish their Brooklyn Hip Hop Festival exploration with a close look at everyone in attendance - from the weed carriers to the label owners.

4) Internets Celebrities Rock The Bells 2007:

Dallas and Rafi attend the biggest New York hip hop show this summer and in doing so witness not only a Wu-tang reunion but some mud-wrestling too!

ENJOY!

More updates to come.

Why did you do this to me?

2007-08-06T12:40:00.000-07:00

We had a pet groomer who makes house calls come and work her magic on our female cat, Huxley. We wanted a sort of full-body mohawk thing. Check out the little sweetie:

It was quite an ordeal, with lots of attempted escapes and a bit of cat-screaming, which it one of the worst sounds known to man. She was, however, an angel compared to Toby, our male cat, who became possessed by a demon as soon as his nails were trimmed. I have a nice gash on my hand as a result. In a bizarre sequence of events, Huxley, who is basically Toby's sworn enemy, ran into the room, stood up on her hind legs and swatted at the nice grooming lady in some gallant sort of rescue attempt. I didn't know she cared. Needless to say, we gave up on Toby, though I'm sure he's a little jealous of Huxley now that all is said and done.

Huxley seems quite happy with her summer do, and now looks like a wisp of a thing. This is a cat who was 19 lbs. as recently as six months ago, now down to 12 lbs. on the doctor's recommendation. An animal communicator once told us that she was proud of her heft, and likened her to a Chinese warrior. I'm sorry we had to take that from her, but she is fucking bad-ass in a different way now.

Thomas Nozkowski on painting

2007-07-30T20:58:00.000-07:00

My dad is a painter.

And I made a video of him talking about his paintings.

The echo chamber effect is courtesy of his upstate painting area for which I did not adequately prepare to supply non-booming speech. At the time, it sounded very much like a studio or a gallery to me. Without much studio context, it's hard to cut away from my dad without the sound becoming distracting.

But that's just one son's critique of how he shot a mini-portrait of his dad. Hearing him talking about his process is dope - be you related to him or not.

New Internets Celebrities Video

2007-07-19T09:24:00.001-07:00

YOU’RE ON THE LIST:
How to attend an Outdoor Concert Internets Celebrities Style:

DO: Watch this VIDEO and learn from it.
DON’T: Hold your deuce in.

My favorite quote from the video:

"I've smoked dust with rappers...
And it was good.
And I got fucking high."

SPAM!

2007-07-11T10:02:00.000-07:00

I made a new movie.

It's called SPAM!

DEAR SIR,

I AM WRITING YOU FROM NIGERIA TO SAY THIS MOVIE SPAM! IS VERY FUNNY AND I WOULD LIKE TO GIV EYOU 10 MMILLLION US DOLLARS. JUST WIRE ME YOUR SOCIAL SEC NUMBER AND I WILL GET TH E REST DONE.

THANK YOU
WITH REAL LOVE
OMARU OGALOTU

Thanks for watching!

Feeling Chipper

2007-06-18T06:33:00.000-07:00

Movies seen recently:

Mr. & Mrs. Smith. Mood - Dumber.

Little Children. Mood - Thinking Jackie Earl Haley would make a great Rorschach, followed by glee today to read that he may very well be cast in the upcoming Watchmen movie.

Children of Men. Mood - Very impressed, mildly depressed.

I'll be posting a new comic over at the newly streamlined Great Western Comics called Rounders on at least a weekly basis. My confidence and aspirations with regards to cartooning are at an all time low, but Rounders is something that gnawed at me, so I'm trying out a format that isn't so time-consuming, is a little rough-hewn, and drops time-released nuggets of gratification rather than sequestering myself for six months to make 24 pages and then dumping on the world with fingers crossed.

Oh yeah, I also saw Grindhouse. Planet Terror was trashy fun, but Death Proof might be the end of cinema. I kid (sort of). You can't bore me for an hour with girls talking in some faint echo of Tarantino-speak and then convince me to care with a sort of kick-ass car chase in the end. Kurt Russell's Stuntman Mike character could be the basis of a great movie... he's fantastic, especially when his inner wimp gets revealed, but Death Proof isn't it.

Bigscreen Bodega

2007-06-14T07:52:00.000-07:00

Here on the internets we sometimes forget that media is actually not always meant to be watched at 320 X 240 pixels. I've gotten so far removed from film festivals in terms of getting my movies out there that I end up never watching my own movies on anything bigger than my computer screen.

This should be corrected. I think the internets can and should still be the priority just in terms of audience potential but it's important to see your movies presented with, well, some kind of presentation. When cutting movies, I think of them only being seen on small, neutral screens. This is as damaging as the old equation - thinking of movies only being seen on the biggest screens with the best sound and ignoring how a flick might look and sound on a laptop.

When you go do an audio mix, the engineer always plays back your mix on both the high-end theater surround sound it's intended for AND the clock radio speakers resting innocently above his board. These days, finished products are seen on more platforms than ever before. Your movies must be flexible. They should be able to play wherever.

So this Friday, BODEGA gets the bigscreen test treatment. I think I've watched it once on a TV screen so I've got no idea how an 11 foot by 14 foot experience will accommodate it. The internets celebrities - hosts of Bodega - are about to become larger than life. Here are the details:

BODEGA
Playing at Rooftop Films
THIS FRIDAY JUNE 15
Part of the New York Non-Fiction Program (always one of the best programs in my opinions)
LOCATION: The Open Road Rooftop Project at 350 Grand Street between Essex and Ludlow in Manhattan

INFO: The Open Road Rooftop Project is atop what used to be Seward Park High School (the building now houses several different schools). You should enter at 350 Grand Street.

For more scoop on the other films and rooftop in general go HERE.

I will be there and we shall definitely have some drinks afterwards!

The Miscellany News

2007-04-30T07:20:00.000-07:00

I remember Cas playing me that cassette with the Lauryn Hill freestyle back in the day. It was pretty amazing. That also reminds me of the time Black Thought allowed some Poughkeepsie hecklers at a live show on the Vassar quad to come onstage and display their skills, which were almost comically lacking. Mr. Thought then followed up with a scorching (what I assume to be) freestyle that I wish I had a tape of to this day. I'm no rap aficionado, but I believe he harnessed the power of the cosmos and converted it into dark virtuoso energy which was hurled at the pretenders, flaying the flesh from their bones, leaving only tottering husks of wet, red, man-meat that soon collapsed into steaming piles of offal. Biohazard crews were alerted for the cleanup. Maybe it doesn't sound that good on tape, who knows.

I went to the zoo yesterday, fell in love with the monkeys all over again. Technically, gibbons and gorillas. Two gibbons which co-habitated with a tapir embarked on a dangerous venture to scoop bugs from the tapir's ear for snacking, one leaning from a nearby log to preform the extraction while the other appeared to hold his fur to keep him from falling. Elsewhere, two young gorillas wrestled, occasionally sprinting to the windows and drumming on the glass to the crowd's delight.

In other ventures of spectatorship, I found myself transfixed for a good twenty minutes the other day, watching a squeegee man on ninth avenue from the window of my workplace. The waiting for red lights to pounce, the angry drivers, his struggles with suddely activated wiper blades, his occasional victories... it was suddenly 1983 all over again.

And on a similar tip of iniquity/inequity, why is my local Starbucks indistinguishable from a methadone clinic at 9am on a weekday? These last two paragraphs have me skating dangerously close to the edge of 'ivory tower asshole'. Oh, I think I found my new band name!

My 25 Favorite Hip-Hop Albums

2007-04-23T13:12:00.000-07:00

The excellent blog Straight Bangin' is using the internets for good. They've asked bloggers and anyone with some passion for the hip hop to submit their personal lists of the 25 greatest hip hop albums of all time. My chum and fellow internets celebrity, Rafi clued me in to the excellent communal effort and after much deliberation and nostalgic waxings, this is what I came up with:

BUHLOONE MIND STATE – De La Soul

Those first three De La albums have an amazing batting average. As I recall, this album was not terribly popular and I remember hearing that De La felt profoundly disappointed by how few units got moved. I hope they've made some peace with this album as I think it comes very close to being a perfect listen. No weak moments. Total balance. This is not an album to shuffle. Much better when listened to in its entirety. I heard 3 Feet again recently. Ridiculous album. Prince Paul: Greatest producer ever? C'mon. He's at least in the discussion...

THE PREDATOR – Ice Cube

This rap album got me into rap. Though I loved PE, the Fat Boys and Grandmaster Flash as a youth, I didn't really recognize it as a genre until this album hit me in the brain. "When Will They Shoot" is pure powerful. Still rock it. Still holds up.

RAISING HELL – Run DMC

I have this on vinyl. My dad gave this to me along with Tougher than Leather and Licensed to Ill - which for some reason he'd picked up and added to his massive LP collection. More lyrical and musical than most rock albums of the same era. "They even bother my poor father cause he's. down. with. me." This is a rap band at its peak.

FEAR OF A BLACK PLANET – Public Enemy

Memorized it. Chuck and Flav are the Woodward and Bernstein of the late eighties rap scene. Epic scope. Truly insightful. Ambitious aesthetic.

ONLY BUILT FOR CUBAN LINKS – Raekwon

Best WU album.

THE LOW END THEORY – A Tribe Called Quest

Tip was well ahead of his time. "What is a poet? All balls no cock." I always took Phife for granted as just a punchline provider. Then Tip went solo. Phife, I just wanted to say I'm sorry. Please get Tribe back together.

THE INFAMOUS – Mobb Deep

I've been listening to the Prodigy solo album over the last couple of weeks. It's good.

LIQUID SWORDS – Gza

"Signal's so deep picked up by radios in tunnels."

ILLMATIC – Nas

Important to me. Important to you. "The type of n**** who be pissin' in your elevator."

MIDNIGHT MARAUDERS – A Tribe Called Quest

"Tip, settle down, what's the reason for the laughter?"
"I really can't say. I guess I laughed to keep from crying. So much going on. People killing. People dying."

ENTER THE 36 CHAMBERS – Wu-Tang
READY TO DIE – Notorious B.I.G
THE BLACK ALBUM – Jay-Z

"99 Problems" is up there on the greatest rap songs of all time list.

AMERIKKKA’S MOST WANTED – Ice Cube
SEX PACKETS – Digital Underground
BLACK ON BOTH SIDES – Mos Def

The song "New World Water" is for all those people who say rappers only rap about the same few subjects.

SUPREME CLIENTELE - Ghostface
VOLUME 3: LIFE AND TIMES OF S. CARTER – Jay-Z

"Go read a book you illiterate sonovabitch" - from Big Pimpin.'
That line always makes me laugh.

THE MARSHALL MATHERS LP – Eminem

"Kill you" is the definition of crisp.

THE SCORE – Fugees

A friend of a friend once gave me a live Fugees freestyle ripped from the radio entitled "Battle of the Sexes," where Lauryn challenges Wyclef and Pras to a battle. They had angered the "Nina Simone defecating on your microphone" songstress by disrespecting the women in the audience. Wyclef does a clearly well-rehearsed rearrangement of lines that Lauryn Hill then utterly obliterates with a REAL straight off the dome freestyle. Of course I lost this cassette and have been unable to find this freestyle. Does anyone have it? The sweetest moment is when Lauryn cracks herself up with the line "... you want my titties in your mouth..." I wish I could remember more of it.

CHECK YOUR HEAD – Beastie Boys

Not ashamed to admit that I used to lip sync and mosh at parties with two other guys to So Watcha Want. One time, one guy got so into it, he threw the other guy through a wall. Everyone was fine through the healing power of The Beastie Boys.

NIGGA PLEASE – Ol’ Dirty Bastard

John Candy. Kurt Cobain. Big Baby Jesus. Deaths that didn't really make sense to me. Personally meaningful pop culture icons whose presence I took for granted on this Earth. I just assumed they'd live forever. I miss Dirty.

MADVILLAINY – MF Doom/MadLib
BIZARRE RIDE II THE PHARCYDE – The Pharcyde

Saw Fat Lip in concert a couple months ago. He asked for a volunteer from the audience to rap two of the parts from Passing Me By. Thought thoroughly hard about doing it. Thoroughly chickened out.

RESURRECTION – Common Sense

Some mind-blowing metaphors going on here. At least at the time, they were sufficiently mind-blowing. The band that made Common Sense become Common should be ashamed of themselves. His music has suffered since the namechange. But this record still kills.

HONORABLE MENTION - BIG & BEAUTIFUL - The Fat Boys

Don't hate on the The Fat Boys.

Go get these albums if you trust my tastes. Or if you don't - and who can blame you (John Candy?) - then wait for Straight Bangin' to publish the consummate list darn soon.

iTunes

2007-04-16T14:20:00.000-07:00

Why does iTunes only occasionally let you download liner notes for albums?

I hate when I click on the photo in the little iTunes menu bar and all I get is a moderately bigger version of that photo.

That would be a great place for some production credits, some thank yous, whatever the hell else I want to know about the musician I'm rocking.

Harumph.

FIRST!

2007-04-02T12:11:00.000-07:00

Chances are if you're reading this on a computer, you're familiar with FIRST posting.

But if you're not, First posters are the people who try with all their might to be the first people to comment on a new blog posting. They symbolize their pioneering ways by not just posting the first comment but by having that first comment be literally "FIRST."

In related news, I just made a new movie. It's called: "FIRST!"

You can find it HERE .

It makes fun of first posters.

Josh Weisbrot shot it. I am in it.

I tried to explain First posting to my parents and was met with a healthy, awkward silence.

Mournful Rumblings

2007-03-28T10:04:00.000-07:00

Lately, I've been taking my video camera with me when I go out. A lot of times, I end up trying to force something to appear interesting.

But sometimes I see SOMETHING worth capturing.

If I'd been a little bolder, I would have truly hung from those bars by my legs. But I couldn't swing it.

From Atlantic Ave to Grand St, the D train offers 10 uninterrupted minutes of train time. I recommend the 4AM slot for maximizing your mournful solitude.

The Perfect Amount

2007-03-13T15:30:00.000-07:00

Forbes says there are a lot of billionaires out there in the world. 946 to be exact. Those are only the ones they could pin down. There might be a few others skating along the top edge of 9 digits who haven't yet stepped their billionaire game up.

Some of these billionaires are multi-billionaires. That is to say they got to 1 billion dollars in assets and were like, what the heck, let's get another billion together and then see if we can't improve on that. Let's see if we can keep up a state of infinite growth.

I'm sure that making money becomes addictive. Most companies exist to make yearly progress. There are very few commercial entities that tell their shareholders they're going to be taking the year off, standing pat and just enjoy the gains they've made to date. No matter how successful a company is, it can be more successful. So the billionaires profiting off these companies live their lives along similar principles and benefit off the march to infinite progress. It is the rare billionaire CEO or chairman who says, nah, go ahead and split my salary and stock with the employees. I'm good. I am saturated with money. We've been successful enough.

When we were playing the lottery last week, a co-worker asked me if I wanted to be rich. Was that a goal of mine?

I replied: "No way. I wouldn't like to be rich as an ultimate goal in and of itself but I wouldn't mind having the freedom to make movies whenever I want. I don't need a mansion," I said.

Then I added, "Just a nice, roomy house upstate. With a studio. Oh, and I would like to own an apartment in the city. In Brooklyn. Doesn't have to be Manhattan. I'd like a pool at my upstate house. And I'd like a nice car. Not a great car. But a solid, dependable, kind of cool car. Make it a hybrid."

It occurred to me that I had started to sound like I wanted to be rich. If I let my mind continue unchecked, I probably could have come up with more stuff that I didn't have to have but I certainly wouldn't mind (jacuzzi, garage in the city, personal trainer, spaceship, etc)

But shouldn't there be a perfect amount for everyone? A line that when you cross signifies you've got as much money as you'll ever need. Aren't most of these 946 billionaires just continuing to accumulate money because it's a habit of theirs? What does a person with 12 billion dollars gain by becoming the proud owner of 27 billion dollars?

I think there could be a service out there that establishes your perfect amount. It indexes your likelihood of having generations after you who need support, how much work you have done to date, how much work you'd like to be doing, your final goals in life and produces a REALISTIC but by no means modest perfect amount. This would be an amount that if you reach it in assets, you would be able to stop and just enjoy your total saturation. I'm not sure what happens then but I think somehow this would help.

Everyone's perfect amount would be different. And a lot of us will never reach our perfect amount. For instance, after doing no real hypothetical calculations, I believe my perfect amount is 4.2 million dollars. I will have achieved total satisfaction when I have 4.2 million dollars in the bank. Right now, I am several million dollars away from my perfect amount.

Anything beyond your perfect amount is just greed and starts to actually work against your happiness. I know those 946 billionaires all seem happy. But they are not.

If anyone would like to avoid this confusion and see their perfect amount tabulated, I and the machine I am going to invent in the future and then bring back to the past will be available for consultation shortly.

Update - To Bill Gates: Your perfect amount is 11.5 million dollars. Please isolate this amount and redistribute your remaining fortune to the rest of the world. You will more immediately achieve the sense of peace your unconscious mind is seeking.

Mega

2007-03-11T15:08:00.000-07:00

Last week, I chipped in with several of my co-workers to buy lottery tickets for the mega millions jackpot. We each gave five dollars in the hopes of the six of us procuring the winning number and splitting north of 250 million dollars before taxes. Guess what happened.

We won.

Three Dollars. And that was only on one of the days we bought tickets. We actually each spent five dollars on three separate days as the jackpot stayed in the multiple hundreds of millions all week long. In other words, it seemed worth it to risk 15 dollars and worth it to even recycle the three dollars we'd won into one final ticket this past Friday. I haven't checked the numbers over the weekend or heard from my co-workers but I like to think one of them would have called me if we were about to claim our massive prize.

It wasn't just us. A lot of people in my office bought lottery tickets this week. In groups. Solo. Bunches of tickets at once or just one lucky ticket bought on a hunch. The record-breaking potential lottery winnings galvanized the population and inspired people like myself who don't normally get in on the lottery to give it a whirl. Considering how much fun it was as a group to buy these tickets, I certainly don't question the impulse - no matter how improbable our odds were.

But why don't we do it more often? If 300 million gets us psyched to blow five dollars, how come 40 million doesn't get us down to the grocery store on the regular? Or even two million. I'd be cool with two million dollars. Even paid out over 26 years, I wouldn't kick two million out of bed.

The feeling at work was that 300 million made the experience finally worth it. 40 million? Nah. That's chump change. Put five bucks against an eight-digit prize? You're just throwing money away. Get me deep into nine digits? Maybe we can work something out. The more fantastic the possible outcome, the more seriously people took it. In my group, there was even a hesitation regarding the second ticket purchase when another person wanted to add her five bucks to our buying power. "But then if we win, we'll have to split the jackpot even further..." somebody grumbled. I didn't agree with the sentiment but I admired how realistic our chances had become and how considerate we were being of the outcome.

Another person in our group made the point that if there was ever a time to energize some good karma by sharing our experience, this was it. Excluding possible team members angers the gambling gods. And there were HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS of dollars at stake! We had to tread lightly. Just imagine if the person we excluded ended up hitting the jackpot on her own. We'd feel pretty darn foolish watching her collect our HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS. If it were a more pedestrian amount, say 40 million, excluding her would be no big deal. But with the kind of money at hand last week, it was better we could all lose together.

Applausual

2007-02-10T13:02:00.000-08:00

I don't like watching people applaud onscreen in movies. And it's not just because sometimes I find myself so far into a movie, that I unconsciously start clapping along like the sheep-clapper I can be.

No, watching people clap in a movie is irritating because it suggests to me that the filmmaker has run out of ways to signify a monumental or resonant moment in a character's storyline. Especially with the advent of cgi-enhanced crowds (thank you George Lucas), I feel like an applause scene is cheating. Being encouraged to feel pride for the recipient of the applause (from generally an anonymous mass of people) and watch him or her bask in the artificial glory is a dead-end visual contrivance.

At the end of Pan's Labyrinth, a character's spiritual achievement is totally undercut by the faceless crowd we've never met before cheering her on. "Look how many people are clapping! This must be a big moment!" screams the scene. But without knowing the people clapping, the connection becomes tenuous and fake and here rings very false.

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire is another guilty party. There are way way too many scenes of crowds acting as one. The emotional shifts become inevitable and heavy-handed. The crowd is mad at Harry for being chosen to compete in the blah blah blah. Boooooooooooo. Harry steals an egg from a dragon. Yayyyyyyyyyyyy.

There are exceptions where the acceptance for an outsider character is demonstrated through a group cheer/applause. These scenes invoke a richer connection by incorporating close-ups of people within the crowd and/or a slow building, 80s-style clap rhythm (Thank you, Lucas).

But along with scenes of drug addicts going through rehab, scenes of crowds applauding/booing without discerning individual sentiment fully expressed need to be shelved for the time being.

More moratoriums as irritation dictates.

(the) Internets Celebrities WENT to Sundance!

2007-02-06T11:00:00.000-08:00

We are returned from Utah and with the posting of Episode 7 yesterday, done with the whole exhausting and satisfying affair. Now, here's the recap:

At this year's Sundance Film Festival, I directed SEVEN short videos - in SEVEN days - characterizing the experience of Dallas Penn & Rafi Kam attending the film extravaganza that descends annually on Park City, Utah.

The series was written by Dallas & Rafi and associate produced by Ian Savage, with original music composed by Matt Lima and graphic design from agent b. The Daily Reel premiered the videos originally on their site and paid for the trip.

All the videos are done and posted now to my youtube page. Here's the episode breakdown:

Go HERE to see Dallas and Rafi pose the question: Is Sundance essentially "a grown-ass spring break?!?"
- Featuring Dustin Diamond reacting to the name Screech!

Go HERE to see Dallas and Rafi encounter the world of free celebrity swag!
- Featuring Jamie Kennedy explaining that in Sundance all celebrities are the same!

Go HERE to see Dallas and Rafi meet Park City's local celebrities!
- Featuring a lot of really forthcoming Park City residents opining on all things Sundance and a brief glimpse of Dakota Fanning surrounded by paparazzi.

Go HERE to see Dallas and Rafi break down some REAL FACTS about Sundance!
- Featuring the TRUTH about Robert Redford.

Go HERE to see Dallas and Rafi meet the filmmakers attending this year's Sundance Film Festival!
- Featuring MC Hammer!

Go HERE to see Dallas and Rafi hit the big and not-so-big parties of this year's Sundance Film Festival!
- Featuring some sick techno by David Hudry (additional vocals by some dude with an inconsistent accent)!

Go HERE to see Dallas and Rafi close out the festival with some survival tips.
- Featuring a (kind of touching in my opinion) montage set to the song “Simple Symphonies” by agent b.

Thanks very much for watching.
I hope you enjoy the series as much as we enjoyed making it.

Super Bowl Fun-day!

2007-02-05T06:39:00.000-08:00

Football is not my favorite sport, but I still tend to have some measure of internal anticipation for the zenith of the football season, Super Bowl Sunday, as if the day were about to bestow gifts upon me like it was Christmas. Although when I think about it, the actual zenith of the football season in my eyes tends to be the second week of the playoffs, where you've got two good games on Saturday and two good games on Sunday. And every once in a while my Jets manage to get that far. Rarely, but it happens.

What stood out about this go-around was that it was my first with a DVR. This enabled the pleasant ability to play video games for an hour while the game recorded in the background, after which I could begin to watch the game while fast forwarding between plays. I had no real rooting interest in the game, though my grandparents are Indianapolis residents and Colts fans, so I sort of hitched my wagon to the Colts. I remember how hapless they were back in the day, when Jeff George was their supposed up-and-coming savior. Ugh.

I hope these random thoughts from the proceedings don't sound too curmudgeony, like my uncle Samuel or something. Because we are different people.

1. I could watch Prince play guitar forever.

2. I'm no Adam Vinatieri hater, but it was fun to watch him miss one on the big stage, inconsequential as that miss turned out to be.

3. I'm not a fan of the advertising strategy in which undue importance is ascribed to a product that's easily available. Bud Light is cheap and plentiful. Apparently animals have had an unfulfilled hankering for beer as well, but what bearing should this have on my drinking decisions? And the idea of two or more people discussing the value of Sierra Mist is just laughable.

4. The Super Bowl is a great excuse to eat pizza and buffalo wings, a meal which proceeded to suck all the moisture from my body like some water parasite. I woke up in the middle of the night with a thirst akin to three days stranded in the desert.

5. We were graced with some of the most amateurish Super Bowl commercials of all time. The Doritos ads, seemingly submitted by aspiring filmmakers and fans of the tangy chip, were interesting if only for the rare opportunity to watch ugly people (by media standards) sell stuff on national TV. And Sales Genie... wow... just, wow.

6. Congratulations to Peyton Manning. Now I no longer have to hear about him... right?

Sundance

2007-01-24T23:28:00.000-08:00

Hello from Utah.

I've been attending the Sundance film festival for the last couple days and for a couple more to come.

I'm making videos about the festival with my friends, Rafi, Dallas and Ian under the moniker: "Internets Celebrities."

We've been sent down here - by TheDailyReel.com - to deliver 7 videos about the festival from Dallas and Rafi's perspective for the 7 days we're here. Thus far, we've delivered 3 on schedule and are locked up in our Main Street, Park City Hotel condo cutting the other 4.

It's fairly bananas to work this hard - turning out videos in 24 hours or less - but the burden eases with each successful output and posting. We try to go out full-force as much as we can but Ian and I end up having to switch off on the editing/shooting details to maximize our time.

Here are the celebrities we've interviewed/shouted at/filmed so far (in chronological order): Dustin Diamond, Jaime Kennedy, (the guy who plays Shooter McGavin in Happy Gilmore), Dakota Fanning, Chris Klein, the FBI agent who turns Big Pussy on the Sopranos, Keith David, Crispin Glover, Carl Lewis, and MC Hammer.

Every single one of them has been extremely good sports about being on camera. The 20 minutes of Hammertime I filmed was genuinely interesting. He was working on two laptops at once when we ran into him at an internet cafe. I can understand having two phones but I don't get why one uses two computers.

All right, back to editing.

If you'd like to see what we've done so far, go to www.thedailyreel.com and check out our daily videos.

Samuel

2007-01-22T06:58:00.000-08:00

My great uncle Samuel from Ozone Park is a navy veteran and an all around curmudgeon. He's expressed some interest in blogs and the internet in general but doesn't really have the wherewithal to get one going on his own. I told him he could write things down on paper and I would post his stuff here as sort of a 'guest blogger', just to get him started. He agreed:

"I've lived in New York City for a long time. People have gotten worse about waiting for the subway car to empty before getting on. It causes quite a traffic jam. Those doors are not big enough to let people out and in at the same time! I also don't like when people boarding the train stop right by the door and plant themselves, blocking other people from getting on. Step all the way in to the middle of the train! That's what the conductor always says. Maybe it's my time in the military that makes it easy for me to follow instructions. These young people don't listen. I see those police cadets on the train a lot though. They never block the doors. I think everyone should wear a uniform at some point in their lives. Like they do it in Israel. Mandatory service.

I see Asian people wearing surgical masks when they're out and about sometimes. I'm sixty-seven years old, smoked when I was younger, then quit with the help of my wife. My lungs are perfect, and I still run a mile three times a week. This is on New York City air I'm talking about. The air these people are apparently too good to breath. Who knows, maybe they're all doctors. I could see myself forgetting to take the mask off if I were a doctor.

I don't understand all this fuss about the We. They've had stuff like that in Japan for forty years. When I was stationed over there they had this thing where kids would dip their arm in a vat of mercury, and then they could control a black-and-white elephant on a movie screen and make him pick up peanuts. Now people are lining up to pay a hundred dollars for this crap. I just don't get it.

What gives turtles the right to have vaginas?

I saw a man on my morning walk this morning who was a flamboyant dresser. He had on plaid pants, a leopard print scarf, and a coat that looked all southwestern, like a blanket you might buy from some squaw off route sixty-six. He looked fabulous, and I wondered why I hadn't thought of it first.

Always remember to vote."

Well, that's it for now. I know he's a little off. Everyone knows the vote is fixed!

The Bodega Experience

2007-01-16T12:39:00.000-08:00

I directed a short documentary entitled Bodega - featuring Dallas Penn & Rafi Kam.

In a cosmic twist of fate, we were given the opportunity to put two versions on the internet.

You can see the shorter one HERE

You can see the longer one here HERE

I wrote about the experience of making it on The Huffington Post. The graphic of the food pyramid there was created by agent b.

The short version is more to the point. The longer version has more jokes. I'm proud of both.

Thanks for watching!

24 (Jack Bauer's day-off)

2007-01-15T14:34:00.000-08:00

Speaking of 24, I've always thought that there should be at least one season devoted to a milder day in Jack Bauer's life.

Forgetting the fact that the amount of trauma and urgency in his life would make most humans' hearts explode, I think the show runs the risk of becoming too repetitive. Last night I saw a commercial for a Fox News segment that promised to explain why this season of 24 would be "different than all the rest."

I'm sure that Fox News broke it down in an impartially insightful manner but I can't imagine how this season is actually that "different." Jack may be facing new enemies and have new permutations of obstacles blocking his path but it's still about him spending a harrowing day saving the world and being in danger. How different can life-threatening situations be?

Provided that Jack Bauer survives this season (FYI - Kiefer's signed a three year contract with the show), I think everyone would benefit from a relaxing season of 24:

01:00:00 - Jack tosses and turns in his sleep. He turns on the TV and watches old SNL reruns.
02:00:00 - Still unable to sleep, Jack gets out of bed and calls an ex-girlfriend. They have an awkward but fulfilling conversation.
03:00:00 - Jack does some emailing. His iCal reminds him CTU is having its company-wide picnic today.
04:00:00 - Jack makes himself some tea. He looks at pictures of his wife (killed in the first season) and misses her.
05:00:00 - Jack fills the bird feeder at his beachfront apartment. He watches the sun rise. The waves are breaking nicely.
06:00:00 - Jack goes for an early dip in the ocean. He talks to some surfers. They encourage him to ride a few waves. He decides to go for it and enjoys the experience.
07:00:00 - Jack cooks up a killer omelet. He eats the omelet and writes in his journal.
08:00:00 - Jack takes a shower and gets dressed. He loads up the car with some Frisbees, a croquet set and a cooler of beers
09:00:00 - Jack drives to the park in LA where the picnic is taking place. Jack punches the ceiling of the car because of the plethora of commercials on his favorite classic rock station. He laughs at how easily he gets frustrated. He switches to NPR and listens to This American Life.
10:00:00 - Jack meets up with the CTU gang and helps set up the grill. Everyone chats about the last terrorist threat they stopped. Jack talks about the Chinese prison he was in and how he's psyched to just chill out for a while. Someone hits Bill Buchanan in the head with a Frisbee.
11:00:00 - A game of Frisbee football develops. Jack wrestles with his competitive nature when he winds up on the worse team. Breathing the fresh air and enjoying the nice day, Jack decides to just relax and have fun.
12:00:00 - The first wave of burgers is ready. Everyone rushes over to the grill with their buns. Jack is first in line but lets the new girl in CTU's administration cut in front of him. She gives him a look. Chloe gets jealous. Jack smiles sheepishly at Chloe.
13:00:00 - Jack and Bill talk about sports. Jack goes for another burger but decides to have a dog instead. He talks about how mustard & ketchup is the best combo.
14:00:00 - Jack and Chloe go for a walk. He talks about his ex-wife a little too much and apologizes for being self-absorbed.
15:00:00 - Jack and Chloe make out.
16:00:00 - Jack and Chloe talk about how they're both not in the right place for a relationship right now. They make plans to see a movie later that week - as friends.
17:00:00 - CTU cleans up after a good day of fun. Bill Buchanan gets a cooler of Gatorade dumped on him.
18:00:00 - Jack gets a call from the president - Wayne Palmer. They talk about sports. Wayne invites Jack to come have a drink at the white house sometime next week. Jack says he will.
19:00:00 - Jack drives home. He gets home and feels restless.
20:00:00 - Jack calls Chloe and asks her if she wants to get a drink. She says yes, she was hoping he'd call. She uses hi-tech satellite triangulation to find an out-of-the-way bar that isn't too trendy. They agree to meet there in an hour.
21:00:00 - Jack gets to the bar and gets a drink. He's a little nervous. He goes in the bathroom and looks in the mirror, monologueing about how he's faced down terrorists and assassins so why should he be nervous on a date with his old friend, Chloe. He comes out of the bathroom just as Chloe enters the bar. They look at each other.
22:00:00 - They have some drinks. Chloe insists on buying the first round. A guy brushes up against Chloe in a sleazy manner. Jack clicks the safety off on his gun. Chloe shakes her head. Jack relaxes and laughs at himself. He puts his gun away.
23:00:00 - Jack and Chloe get a little drunk. They are very affectionate with each other. Jack runs into the sleazy guy in the bathroom and demands he apologize to Chloe or Jack will drown him in the sink. The guy apologizes and leaves the bar in a hurry.
00:00:00 - Jack and Chloe leave the bar and head back to Chloe's place. They start making out. It gets a little heavy. Chloe asks Jack if he has any condoms. He doesn't. Jack drives to the local convenience store and buys some Trojans - ribbed. He heads back to her apartment and has trouble finding parking. He breaks into a car, hotwires it, re-parks it by a hydrant and moves his car into the newly open spot. He looks at his gun and decides he doesn't need to carry it tonight. He puts it in the glove compartment. He heads into Chloe's apartment.

No Druthers For Suthers

2007-01-15T08:48:00.000-08:00

I understand that 24 is a supremely popular show. I've never watched it, personally. Something about the way those Fox shows are advertised makes me feel like a thin film of scum is accumulating on my eyeballs whenever the ads run. Prison Break is another one.

Can someone fill me in on what I might be missing? Whenever 24 commercials come on, Kiefer Sutherland seems to be screaming at someone who is usually tied to chair. Then Keifer kicks the chair so they fall, helpless, onto their back. That hardly seems fair. This has been going on for like five years now. I suppose it's Bauer's signature move.

Bad Moon Rising

2007-01-09T10:11:00.001-08:00

What's worse than leaving work, getting on the train, realizing you left your keys at work, getting off the train and walking back to the office to retrieve them? Doing all that, then arriving at your desk and being unable to find them, only to realize they were in your bag the entire time.

Yesterday was a strange day. Menace was in the air early as I arrived at work to discover the stench of natural gas everywhere. Apparently this was a widespread phenomenon on the west side of Manhattan, still unexplained by dismissed by the authorities as not dangerous. My favorite theory floated was that it was a leak of Mercaptan itself, the additive that gives natural gas its odor. I love the idea of a non-dangerous leak of something that is only there to signify danger. It's like the opposite of a placebo.

It was just one of those days... strange people about, abnormal behavior on all sides. My walk home featured a woozy man who appeared to be the victim of some minor assault complaining to a cop that the perpetrator had escaped and how it "wasn't nice". At the top of the subway steps stood a man who I've seen a lot in the past year. Sometimes he wears a neck brace, sometimes he doesn't. He's often talking to no one in particular, but a week ago and twelve blocks eastward, he had warned me to be careful of the traffic because people were "driving like crazy". There was also the man with the extreme palsy who's usually seated inside the station but seemed to have relocated, perhaps against his will, or perhaps enjoying the tail end of El Nino. All in all, the tone was very similar to that tracking shot in the beginning of The Terminator, where the kids are huddled around the television, a fire burning in its broken screen.

Wireless

2007-01-05T14:52:00.001-08:00

So for the first time in seven years, I’m living in an apartment that lacks internet. I anticipated this situation and probably even welcomed it on some level. I work in an office for a good chunk of most weekdays where I have as much bandwidth and connectivity as I can use. I thought if I didn’t have it at home, I’d save money, I’d be productive (editing and general writing if not blogging-wise) and if I needed it, I could always hunt down an internet café.

At this point, there’s still a lot of free wireless out there. Two things have surprised me:

1) A lot of the best places for free wireless are actually bars. I thought cafés had the monopoly on wireless – the theory being it’s harder to sleepily spill coffee on your computer than drunkenly tip over a glass of wine. Nope. People like to drink and browse. Plus, I actually find the connection in bars faster than cafés. It could be there are less people in bars using computers – meaning less strain on the network. Or it could just be the booze talking.

2) Having to depend on it has demonstrated to me just how many places charge for the use of their internet. Some places have computers and charge for their use. This seems fair. You’re actually downloading all your viruses, signing up for porn and generally mashing all the keys on their machine. But I have a laptop and I can’t stand the idea of paying for the use of wireless in a public place.

My problem with #2 is that wireless costs pretty much nothing. 50 bucks a month gets you the cable modem. 150 bucks for the wireless base station and you’re good to go. 200 bucks seems like a small price to pay for a pretty good way of bringing people into your establishment. But then again, I’m not a business owner so I don’t want to presume to know what’s a fair expense to a new business.

From a consumer’s viewpoint, I can’t believe that people – with laptops – pay to use a Starbucks’s wireless. There’s one on Delancey St., near my internet-free apartment. One night, I was desperate to get online. And like most times when I’m desperate to get online, it’s because I’m downloading or uploading a media file (short video or graphic or music). I only need about ten minutes to pull it off. To get online at Starbucks, I though that it might take a purchase or a small fee. In fact, you have to literally sign up credit-card style for fairly big units of wireless time. You can’t just buy ten minutes worth. You have to do it for a whole day, a week, a month, etc. I unfortunately did not learn this fact until I’d bought a diabetes-inducing hot carmel apple cider – with caramel!

So should no place charge for wireless? I was in Brooklyn this weekend and was looking for a good internet spot. I walked into a new internet café in Williamsburg and asked the guy at the counter if they had free wireless. He said no. Not free. It was five dollars for six hours worth of online activity. I said thanks and started to walk out. He stopped me and asked what I would do in his position. His problem was this: If wireless internet was free in his establishment, people would just sit in the café and not buy anything. I felt like this was the opportunity I had been waiting for. With more places charging for the use of their broadband, I thought that if I could just convince one business owner, the dominoes would soon fall and wireless scrooges would see the error of their way.

The not buying anything is the tough part. The sitting there all day part seems like less of a problem for a new café to have. If there’s one thing that’s a little depressing it’s a new café with empty tables. I mean, you want people to sit there and enjoy themselves. Otherwise, why not just open a coffee-stand? But I guess I feel him on freeloaders like myself just using the internet with nary a purchase in sight. I think the compromise is this: Go ahead and make wireless available with a purchase (even a purchase as small as a coffee). Even though I think this ruins a little bit of the goodwill of totally unlimited connectivity, it ensures that people will have paid something for the service. Plus, I think most people wouldn’t take advantage. Call me an optimist but I think most people wouldn’t sit in front of their computer in a café all day. And if they did – they’ve got to eat something. Then, it’s just up to the café to make the food/drink worth buying.

This was the case I made to the new café owner. One purchase for unlimited wireless. He said sure, one purchase of no less than five dollars. I argued that people buy coffees and sit in cafes for long stretches reading or talking anyway. Get the people into your café first. If there’s massive overcrowding and people are squatting for full days on just one cup of coffee, feel free to change things then. But right now, you could have worse problems than people clamoring to get in and get on your internets!

I realized I was speaking too passionately on the subject. He thanked me for my opinion and dismissed me. I went up the block to the Roebling Tea Room and waited for them to allow computers to be used on the tables (free wireless but not during brunch!)

In closing to this ramble, I urge you not to pay for wireless. Instead, go to some of these fine establishments (if you’re on the lower east side) and use their free connect while enjoying a medium sized beverage purchased on the premises:

Full City Coffee (409 Grand St.)
Lotus Lounge (35 Clinton St.)
Lolita Bar (266 Broome St.)

Editor’s note: This post was finished and posted from the front seat of my car, parked on Broome St., sitting in front of Lolita Bar – within range of their wireless connection.

What I Did On My Winter Vacation

2007-01-01T18:07:00.000-08:00

First off, I'm a little jealous that Casimir was able to snag the .com while I was left with the crumbs of the .net. But who's complaining?

Now in my first year as a staff member at my current job (as opposed to freelance), I was fortunate enough to have the week between Christmas and New Year's off. It was splendid.

I ate filet mignon twice.

I went cross-country skiing on a ring of man-made snow in Vermont. The real thing was in short supply.

I defeated Marvel: Ultimate Alliance with the help of my friend Ben Fine. He played as Iron Man, I as Wolverine. Dr. Doom never knew what hit him.

I saw Spring Awakening with the lovely Susan. It was quite good... sort of like Rent, but with better music, and set in 1880's Germany. Our seats were actually on the stage, which was slightly unnerving. Susan tried to guess who seated among us were secretly cast members (it seemed inevitable, and certain individuals who were seated alone were suspiciously well-scrubbed and decked in earth-tones). The kid who sat next to me should have aroused our suspicion immediately when he made the previously humorless usher who showed us to our seats laugh with seeming ease, but he played us for fools, chatting with us a bit, saying he hadn't seen the show but he had been listening to the CD. When the show started, he kept tapping his feet to the music in a way that made the risers shake in a supremely annoying fashion. I considered asking him to stop, but was glad I hadn't when three songs into the show he whipped out a mic and started singing with the ensemble. Still, I hated his constant rhythmic stomping and the fact that he lied to us. Nice guy, though. But how would I know? ACTOR!

I recorded a new song called Ways and Means which you can hear here or here. This is the first one to have real drums on the recording. Forgive my somewhat sloppy timing... it's been a while.

Quick Observation and Resolutions

2006-12-30T17:40:00.000-08:00

My left finger fits snugly into my left eardrum. My right finger does not totally fit into my right eardrum.

Is this because my left finger is thinner/smaller than my right finger? Or because my right eardrum is thinner/smaller than my left eardrum? The fingers look the same size pointing next to each other. The eardrums look the same in the mirror.

I've tried getting the right finger into the left eardrum but the angle isn't conducive to a truly controlled experiment. I may never know the answer to this question. I may never not like not knowing.

My resolution for 2006 was to swim more and see more live concerts. I succeeded.

Best swimming of 2006: natural swimming area in upstate New York called Deep Hole. I first went there in May and felt so amazingly cold, I could think of nothing else but the low temperature. It obliterated my mind.

Best live show of 2006: Raekwon and Redman at BB Kings.

Resolutions for 2007: Get less parking tickets. See more films at Film Forum. Visit Alaska.

The Christmas Party

2006-12-22T09:11:00.000-08:00

I never thought as myself as someone who would one day be attending company Christmas parties. I recently attended my third consecutive bash under my current employer. Years one and two I was a mere freelancer. That first one was a whirl of new faces, endless wine, and an introduction to the pleasures of eating lamb's ankle. Year two saw more lamb ankle, and the attendance of my girlfriend. Our end of the night goodbyes featured the boss telling me how much his opinion of me improved now that he'd met her. She and I still ponder over what percentage of this statement constituted a compliment and what part insult.

Year three sees me as a full-fledged member of the staff; a supervisor, no less... tending to equipment worth more than I am currently and wrangling people whose relative worth I'm in no position to judge. Or is cattle terminology intrinsically judgmental? No, they're great. I wondered if my new status might lend a different tenor to this year's gathering, but I found wine on an empty stomach to be a much stronger arbiter of behavior than any title on a business card... and since the wine has been a three year constant, little changed. The food was French this year instead of Italian (no lamb ankle). I think I did make more of an effort to make introductions between my date and co-workers in every corner of the room. Perhaps my semi-permanence (hey, I can't be held down) made such connections feel like a better investment of time and effort. I had a new suit this year as well.

On the subject of office Christmas parties, let's discuss this year's Office Christmas Party (the one featured on NBC). Apparently, the waitresses who served Michael's Scott and co. were actual Benihana waitresses, whereas the two women who then accompany Michael and Andy to the party were actresses. That explains the switcheroo that had me scratching my head mid-episode when their dates proved not to be the girls they were courting amidst Nog-a-saki's. But I really hate the way Michael introduced the one woman as his new "girlfriend" upon his arrival back at Dunder-Mifflin. His date seemed totally oblivious to what was a bizarre and presumptive proclamation worthy of a ten-year-old play-acting upon re-entering the house from a playdate in the backyard with the neighbor's daughter. I used four heiphens in that sentence.

I know that Michael Scott's oblivious nature is pitched a bit younger than David Brent's, and I'm all for Carell not doing a complete re-hash of the Gervais character, but stuff like this tests my belief in the world they're trying to create. David Brent's strange mix of pride and loneliness left him unable to deal with anyone or anything in an honest fashion until it was too late (well, until the Christmas special, that is). I know people like that. Michael Scott seems like an individual who completely missed out on the socialization process at an early age (I love some of the stories about his life with his mother that slip out from time to time to illustrate this). I also know people like that, but Scott is aggressively childish in a way that I don't think anyone could actually roll with, and it's always the women who do the rolling. The Benihana waitress, Carol, even Jan who gets it 95% of the time but then has her own loneliness-fueled lapses with Steve. I love the Michael/Jan dynamic in theory, but sometimes the Michael Scott character is such a cartoon, they don't earn the moments where it looks like Michael might actually be able to navigate the adult world some modicum of success.

I could write for a long time about the Office... I still love the show. It's just that the U.K. version is such a perfect gem of a series, in part because of its freshness and especially because the relatively short run allowed them to pace and complete the central love story perfectly. The U.S. version has several things going against it, like the product placement, and the fact that it's 'cash cow' status ensures a long run that will make it difficult to manage the Jim/Pam storyline without bleeding it dry (I think that's already starting to happen). I understand all that, which is why it hurts a little to watch unnecessarily detrimental choices being made with Carell's character. I guess it's like the "Jerk Homer" syndrome that everyone used to talk about with the Simpsons. An aspect of the show comes to the fore, and then it gets pushed beyond the sweet-spot, eating away at the show's emotional reality.

Still, I could watch Stanley do anything. That guy's amazing.

Of Mace and Men

2006-12-21T08:57:00.000-08:00

This children's Halloween costume I stumbled upon horrified me a little bit:

Peer into the cold, black eyes of Samuel L. Jackson's deathmasque, strangely disproportionate to your six-year-old's adorable little feet!

Some notes on my relationship to Star Wars. I rediscovered it in college, suddenly inclined to revel with older eyes in the details of aesthetic design continuities throughout the saga, and milking the echoes of my primal childhood response to the films... re-experiencing some of that big feeling from 15 years earlier. My parents procured a VHS bootleg of the original movie from some insider (we lived in Hollywood at the time) back in the late 70's which I continued to watch for years. It had some quirks from the transfer, one of which excised an entire scene where 3PO and R2 are hiding from Stormtroopers in a back alley of Mos Eisley, offering instead a strange, static-filled transition from the preceding scene to the one following. But chronologically, this tape's impact (by the time I actually got around to watching it) actually came after...

...The Empire Strikes Back, which I swear marks the emergence of my conscious memory. Also contending for that honor is the whale at Disneyland... I saw boats go in its mouth but didn't see them emerge on the other side, and the mystery of what horrors people experienced within that whale haunted me through the fourth grade. Anyway, Han Solo being put into carbon freeze is what I remember from that screening; a mixture of color schemes (blue and orange, somehow mixing to purple in my memory, and did that blue and orange lead me to become a Mets fan?), disbelief, and some sort of attractive darkness that made my heart hurt. That scene is like a conduit back to that time, that feeling, and it continues as some sort of litmus test against which to measure myself at intervals along my march towards an inevitable and hopefully far, far off death.

As a teenager who overthought everything, the personal, collegiate re-emergence of Star Wars seemed like an excellent thing to fixate on, taking the place of the day-in-day-out micromanagement and second-guessing of all my relationships and personal behavior (a role now fulfilled by video games). In that respect I can thank Star Wars for taking me out of my own head a little bit, though that may have happened naturally anyway. I can also thank it for drumming up a level of personal enthusiasm in 1998 and early '99 theretofore unmatched since the Christmas when I received my first Nintendo. I figured Lucas's return to the universe was a George Tenet-ian "slam dunk". And I suppose it was. In that it was not. Maybe one of my friends who also attended the 2 a.m. screening of The Phantom Menace could describe the horrified daze in which I walked out of there. I went on to see it 10+ times in the theater. I was an aimless chap back then, and after a night of drinking it was easy to slip into a 1 a.m. screening on a given night and fervently catalog all the things that were wrong with it.

Anyway, I do like Mace Windu, with all his weird line deliveries, and that funny little scrunched up face he makes when fighting Chancellor Palpatine... in extreme close-up.

"This party's over!"

I am in the web showing off my stuff more clearly

2006-12-15T14:45:00.000-08:00

Casimirnozkowski.com - the quintessential site for all things Casimir and Nozkowski - is now active.

After an intense bidding war with the other Casimir Nozkowskis lurking around the internets, I was able to secure the dotcom and post some videos and other things.

Meanwhile, I filmed THIS and lost a little faith in humanity.

But then I filmed THIS and felt a lot better.

Let's go crazy!

2006-09-22T13:53:00.000-07:00

Let's party like it's 5767!

Happy Rosh Hashanah.

Whoot! Whooooooooot!
That's the sound of da shofar!

Every 7 Seconds

2006-09-18T11:49:00.000-07:00

They say the average man thinks about sex every seven seconds.

My new short video attempts to illustrate that fact.

You can find it HERE.

Thank you very much.

The Candidate

2006-09-15T10:36:00.000-07:00

I'm writing to announce my candicacy for the U.S. Senate. Planned revisions to our way of life will include:

1. The carpeting of New York City in its entirety. This will improve our way of life dramatically, including but not limited to:

a. new-found ease in traversing the city wearing nothing but a robe and slippers
b. an employment boom due to increased need for vaccum operators
c. safer for the children, don't you think?

2. Existing subway lines will be augmented with a "thrill ride" option. Demands on natural resources will be lessened, as these new lines will operate primarily on momentum and looping spirals.

3. The need to have announced one's candidacy prior to a given party's primary will be abolished retroactively, once I am in office.

As an honest politician, I feel compelled to admit that my term of service, or rule, will focus almost exclusively on our metropolitan area, to the exclusion of our greener, more northerly climes. However I do take a singular interest in acquiring the sixteen acres where I grew up outside Port Jervis, New York (now subdivided and sullied by several family residences) and converting it to a State Park which only I and my dog can visit.

Good night, and God bless America.

"Form Letter from God to Children"

2006-09-05T14:05:00.000-07:00

September 1, 2006

GOD
Heaven

To: Children, Earthly Plane

Re: Award year 2006-07

Dear Child (age 3 - 12) and/or Applicant on Child’s behalf,

I would like to thank you for writing me to appeal for divine intervention.

Your thoughtfully worded query and/or concerns demonstrate a fresh take on how the world I made for you works and what you need to succeed in it. It’s been great to get some feedback from the younger generations. I hear you.

Every year, I receive an inspiring number of letters, prayers and shouted pleas from a vast pool of eligible, children applicants. This year was no different as the number of pleas for varying levels of deliverance, salvation or worldly reward exceeded infinity. To my dismay, I am only able to offer a few candidates the salvation they desire.

Timothy Reed Smith (East Lansing, Michigan), Keisha Jackson (Newark, New Jersey) and Xu Hing Fei (Henan Province, China) were granted the ponies they applied for. James Whitaker (Juneau, Alaska) will find his request for a cancerous growth on his dog Ralph’s hind leg to be rendered benign has been approved. Marie Van Douten (Netherlands) will, in fact, not be grounded and Ali Al Hayed (Dubai, United Arab Emirates) can have ice cream for breakfast all week.

Unfortunately, at this time, I have the unenviable task of letting you know I am not able to accommodate your request. This is definitely the hardest part of my job. You might not believe it, but there are limits to omnipotence.

I strongly encourage you to pray to me again in the coming award year. I look forward to reading your future letters.

Best regards,

GOD!

Hide Your Things Anywhere

2006-08-26T14:19:00.000-07:00

Some people like having their bag with them when they go out. Certainly most women - in my experience - feel more comfortable being out on the town with some necessities at hand in bags of varying sizes. I've rifled through some purses in my time and can not truly argue with the desire to have an ipod, tiny umbrella, gym clothes, tissues, giant wallet, book or two, gum, deodorant and so on. The male version involves a backpack or manpurse that holds roughly the same contents. The point is: people carry things and seem to like carrying these things. People like to be distracted and have distraction available for down-time. People like to anticipate problems and carry the solutions with them.

I was once like that. Unfortunately, I have lost my taste for traveling with added weight. My dilemma is that I do still prefer traveling with many of the aforementioned objects. Certainly, a book. A magazine. An umbrella. An ipod. I like having them. I don't like holding them. I don't like having to watch them in a crowded bar. I don't like any further imbalance when challenging my equilibrium with the bar's wares. If you feel similarly conflicted, I have recently been exploring a new option:

Hide your unwanted but indispensable objects in plain sight around New York City (or a city of your choice).

About six months ago, I left my house in Williamsburg, Brooklyn and headed into Manhattan for a birthday party way downtown, around the South Street Seaport. Expecting a long subway ride and being the kind of person who doesn't like to stare into space, I brought a New Yorker along with me to read. I'd gotten through the Talk of the Town and maybe the first article when I reached my destination. I curled the magazine up and put it in my backpocket and started walking towards my friends' apartment. As I walked, it started to fall out, and seemed like it was going to be a drag at the party. Sure, I could just put it aside when I got there but that policy had resulted in a high rate of forgotten belongings. In a pinch, I would have thrown it away but dagnabbit, I hadn't yet read their persnickety, self-righteous film reviews and definitely wanted to check out the feature on Ghostface. Pondering my options, I noticed a lone payphone kiosk on my right. A gap between the phone and the frame of the kiosk caught my eye. I curled my magazine up even tighter and slipped it into the space. Stepping back, I made sure I was alone, nodded appreciatively at the magazine's shadow-covered inconspicuousness and headed for the party.

I then got drunk and forgot about my magazine. A few days later, it occurred to me that I had left it hidden downtown. I made my way to the South Street Seaport area and found the phone kiosk. Lo and Behold, my magazine was still there. I think I may have said the word 'Nice' outloud. I looked around. No one had witnessed my triumph. On the other hand, no one would know my secret talent for hiding things around New York City. Until now!

I went on to test my almost paradoxical ability to travel lighter but carry whatever I wanted with me. Payphones offered the best options for magazines. But what about other objects? What about money? I have another amazing ability. It is the ability to accumulate change. I guess I don't buy a lot of things that end in round dollars. Thusly, I walk the earth with lots of coins. It's actually not that big a deal. It's not that big a deal IF YOU HAVE POCKETS!

Basketball shorts rarely come with pockets. When they do, it is the rare basketball player who wishes to play five-on-five, three-on-three or 21 with the weight and jingle of coins in his or her pockets. Having bought myself a gatorade one day for the sensible price of 1 dollar and twenty-five cents, I was left heading to the park with my keys, my gatorade and my three quarters. It felt like too much. Yet, I couldn't see myself throwing any of them away. Passing a small series of hedges in front of an apartment building, I had a notion to bury my change at the base of the third hedge. I heeded this notion, keeping my peripheral vision engaged for curious pedestrians. Standing up, I recounted the hedges just to be sure and headed for the courts.

I then played very poorly, walked home in a funk and forgot about my 6 bits.

Coming back from a cup of coffee the next day, I recalled the change I'd left hidden. I walked casually to the burial ground and scooped out the coinage. It was all there. Dirty. But all there. And this wasn't just some magazine. This was currency. I'd successfully hidden currency on a public street in New York City. I self-consciously pumped my fist and said the word 'Yes' outloud.

To date, I've hidden umbrellas (looped around the branch of a tree, behind the front wheel of a car), change (buried in gardens, flower pots and sitting on window sills), magazines (phone kiosks, under benches, behind the back wheels of cars), books (under the gate of a closed deli or shop), and groceries (tea, vitamins, a big orangina - all were secured in an apartment's first floor flower bed). I've been known to stash the half-drunk pepsi or gatorade bottle but have thus far never returned for them.

Crazy? You might be right. Not worth it? Possibly. It generally falls into the category of too much work for a mildly more convenient experience. As you can see from the above anecdotes, I still ended up forgetting the very thing I had sequestered in the hopes of not forgetting it. But damn it, hiding things is fun. That's why I'm sharing it. There is something reassuring about being able to conduct your own public scavenger hunt in one of the world's largest cities and always be the winner.

When recovering my hidden property, I like the feeling that strikes me:

I can trust New York.

Time Mistake. Rooftop. Friday. August 25.

2006-08-20T17:03:00.000-07:00

A new movie I made with Maura Madden called Time Mistake is playing at Rooftop Films this coming Friday, August 25. It's on the lawn of Automotive High School in Williamsburg.

It's a very lo-fi movie. Camera mic. 1-chip camera. About a pint of fake blood slathered on my body. I'm thrilled with how it came out.

The thing about fake blood is that it's basically just syrup. It gets sticky very quickly. I had an amazing and painful series of bruises I can only attribute to skin stuck to other skin.

Maura and I share the camera operating duties. This was the second movie that we made together. The first being The Hello Curve.

Time Mistake is in the Home Movies show at Rooftop. You can see a very cool trailer for this show and find out details HERE.

The band starts at 830pm. The show starts at 9pm. I will be there at 830 and we will assuredly get some drinks together afterwards.

Fun With Scissors

2006-08-17T10:09:00.000-07:00

I recently made a short film for the Directors' Club called The Playdate. Though it's a little bit awful, it does feature some Oscar-worthy performances by Ben Fine, Casimir Nozkowski, Elliot Jokelson and Susan Stewart.

You can view it here.

Misanthrope. Rooftop. Saturday. August 5th

2006-08-01T15:27:00.000-07:00

Aaron Hill & The Crimson Guard's new video "Misanthrope" will be making its bigscreen debut this Saturday night (August 5th) at Rooftop Films. It's part of their cryptically themed shorts program entitled Trapped Inside the Machine. Rooftop has been doing great work this summer and dollars to donuts, they'll come through again with perhaps the most ambitiously themed shorts program of any film festival around.

For an example of the type of creepiness you can expect this Saturday, see the film from this program Salon.com recently posted here.

The show starts at 9PM in Williamsburg, Brooklyn on the lawn of Automotive High School. I'm going to be there. I hope you can make it and that we can get some drinks afterwards too.

Ghetto Big Mac

2006-07-27T08:46:00.000-07:00

I'm not advocating frequent trips to McDonalds...

But if you HAVE to go to McDonalds, you should at least try to get over on them.

I recently directed and edited an instructional DIY video on how to construct your own Big Mac for a buck and change.

Dallas Penn and Oh Word and I present Ghetto Big Mac.

It's time to remix the dollar menu!

Or as Dallas might say, "Every fry can get it."

Customer Service

2006-07-19T10:59:00.000-07:00

Every month, my bank charges me a one dollar fee for having a debit card. This practice started about a year ago and fell unfortunately into the category of problems that are just small enough for me to not do anything about them. I think to myself, 'to remedy these problems would take more time than they are worth.' This is a bad practice that adds up over time - especially if you take that annual 12 dollars and add it to the annual 25 dollars I pay for a Consumer Reports account I don't use and probably a few other charges I've selectively ignored.

Then I blew up my Netflix account and lost my credit card. The former act was empowering in a destiny-changing kind of way, the latter gave me a reason to get on the phone with my bank. I figured that since I was already talking to a customer service representative I might as well air out all my grievances. Here's roughly how the fee part of the conversation went:

Me: "Oh, by the way, there's a dollar fee or maybe it's a dollar-fifty fee that appears on my bill every month and I think is because of my debit card - which by the way I don't even use."
Bank: "We can get rid of that for you."
Me: "I don't even know where my deb-" (contemplative pause) "You'll get rid of it?"
Bank: "It's done. We've taken it off your bill."
Me: "That was easy."

Ask of thy bank and thou shall receive.

Me: "Also, bank, I'd like a fancier car."
Bank: "Done. It's done. We just got you a porsche. It's parked out back."
Me: "Good lookin' out!"
Bank: "Holler at your bank."

What's Your Percentage?

2006-07-02T23:34:00.000-07:00

The average man thinks about sex every seven seconds. I'd accepted this commonly known fact for many years when a friend pointed out the obvious: How was this proven? Did a selection of men walk around with a clicker and mark each time they thought about sex? Did they develop a type of brainscan that was able to register and distinguish erotic thoughts? Or, really, was it more of an approximation that sounded realistic?

I think I first heard this statistic in eighth grade from a girl trying to establish how much of a dog a man could be. To think about it every seven seconds felt extreme then. It was hard to imagine our minds were being interrupted 8 times over the course of a minute by an uncontrollable urge to contemplate our limited understanding of physical affection. I thought back to the hour prior to the young woman's declaration. I hadn't thought about sex once during my lunch period. But maybe this girl knew what she was talking about. She certainly said it with authority - as if she'd clearly read it in a magazine! Establishing this as a proven statistic, my mind immediately obliged the scenario and provided dirty snapshots every seven seconds. It seemed hard to keep up with the pace but not altogether out of the question. Then, holes in the theory started to form. What was a thought about sex? Was it just a flash of a breast? A fully formed narrative involving my camp counselor (Heather... sigh)? What if I was "reading" Juggs in the Shoprite (they had a dirty magazine section)? Did that count as one thought about sex or many? All of a sudden, it didn't seem quantifiable.

Right. It works along the lines of the statement that a person is murdered every 12 minutes in the United States. There aren't actually nicely timed murders. It's just an extrapolation from a year-end statistic illustrating how many murders there are every year and dividing that number into the number of minutes in the same year. Except with sexual thoughts, what hard evidence is there that the average man thinks about sex 14% of the time? It sounds right. Sure. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that I think about sex 25% of the time. Not every day. Not every hour. But if you looked at a year of my life, I'd say at least 25% of those 365 days was spent thinking about sex. Still, the seven seconds line is just a soundbite. Despite it being realistic, it's bad statistical science. Maybe this is obvious to you. I had to have it explained to me before I realized that percentages of time spent thinking about specific subjects were hard to more than subjectively calculate. I like to take people at their word and that eighth grade girl was taller than me and therefore probably knew more about sex than I did.

But now, ask yourself, what is your percentage? Not just sex - though that's one of the more interesting subjects - but how do your waking, thoughtful hours break down? Here's what I came up with:

25% of my thoughts are spent Thinking about Sex
20% of my thoughts are spent Thinking about Death
10% of my thoughts are spent Thinking about Food
20% of my thoughts are spent Thinking about Movies
10% of my thoughts are spent Thinking about Work
15% of my thoughts are spent Thinking about Family & Friends

The minute I finished this list, I wanted to refine it. Here's another stab at it:

20% Sex
10% Love
10% Growing Old
15% Food/Drinking
10% Partying
20% Being creative
10% Paying work
5% Traveling

The fact is, we have lots of miscellaneous thoughts that are hard to categorize. Here's a thought I had today: "The neck on my t-shirt sure is stretched out a lot."

15% Sex
15% Creative work
10% General anxiety
5% Basketball
5% General Appreciation of the Earth
10% Friends
10% Parents
5% Movies
5% Food/Snacks
5% Death/Health
5% Driving
5% Politics/Current Events
5% Miscellaneous, disconnected thoughts (a la the neck of my t-shirt)

I had tried to be a little more specific while at the same time absorbing things like 'Paying work' into 'General anxiety' or moving Death into its own category separate from anxiety. I think about Death sometimes without being anxious about it. A Miscellaneous category may be a bit of a cop-out but I like giving some lip service to the thoughts that seem to come out of nowhere, appear and just as unexpectedly, melt away. Also, I eliminated Love as a category because I think Sex serves as a better overview field. Love is very specific and while a beautiful and whole thing, it often feels connected to Sex. At least, that's what I think.

Just having written those last two lines makes me want to form a new list where Love occupies the majority of my thoughts.

These percentages are all a work in progress. But it's neat to try and refine your personal list - especially telling it to someone else and making it have to add up to 100%. You'll be surprised what you leave out the first try. And what you prize. Thinking about what you think about can provide some shocking clarity. Everyone I've talked to about their percentages has had wildly different takes on it. Not just the percentages and numbers change. What's really interesting is the terms with which people catalogue their thoughts. Death could just as easily be Mortality or Legacy or Anxiety. Sex could just as easily be Intimacy. Or broken into Love, Intimacy and Partying. I'm looking at my list again and wondering why I don't have a listing for music. I sure listen to and think about a lot of music every year. For someone else, music might get 40%. Or Food (which they call Eating) could get 25%.

So, the question is... How often do you think about what?

What's your percentage?

Jordan, Lebron and 23

2006-06-29T11:39:00.000-07:00

Choosing a number to wear during your basketball career is probably fairly difficult. Lots of lucky or meaningful numbers have been retired. Lots of other players are probably wearing the numbers you wore at earlier points in your basketball narrative. It's tough.

Still, I don't think that excuses Lebron James for choosing an entirely unoriginal number. He wears #23 for the Cavaliers ostensibly because he wore it in high school. But if there was a good chance I was going to become one of the greatest basketball players of all time, I would probably not wear the number of another greatest basketball player of all time. Invariably, different stars each year get compared to Jordan and summarily dismissed for some flaw in their game or lack of overall success. Lebron is one of these stars - someone who will be mentioned in the same breath as Jordan for the next 10 - 15 years. Only, he's on track for a similar amount of success and has a fairly flawless game at age 21.

Maybe jersey numbers don't matter. I came to this train of thought after sitting through a long but satisfying Yankees game yesterday afternoon and idly looking out over the many numbers that had been retired. The double 8s caught my eye. The only number that has been retired twice on the same team is #8 for the Yankees. Bill Dickey and Yogi Berra - both catchers - both wore it and both saw it retired. Their monuments now stand side-by-side in the monument corner of the stadium. The goal of retiring a number seems like it should be to take it out of the conversation, to only see it mentioned with regard to that ONE player. Did Bill Dickey see it as veneration when Yogi took his number (before it was retired) or was he just slightly annoyed?

While #23 has only been retired in Chicago, Jordan was such a great player it's really like his number was retired everywhere. Even when Don Mattingly (who meant way more to me than Jordan) wore #23 for the Yankees, I always felt like he was wearing Jordan's number. Donnie Baseball actually switched his jersey from #46 to #23 in 1984 - the same year that Jordan was drafted by the Bulls! (Also, Mattingly has a son named Jordan. What does this prove? That wikipedia is kind of cosmically awesome. ) So if Jordan's number overshadows great players in other sports, how's it going to look when Lebron's legacy is inextricably tied to Jordan because of their shared jersey numbers? At the very least, it's going to make it slightly more complicated for Lebron to establish his own legend and slightly less meaningful when his number gets retired by the Cavs.

If I was Lebron I would change my number. Here are some numbers I like:

60
4
8 (now that Kobe is changing his jersey number)
72
13 (I'm not a huge A-rod fan but I admire his embracing and overcoming the unluckiness of 13. I saw him hit a walk-off, game-winning homerun yesterday.)
83
44
123 (isn't it time we got into triple digits?)

Alarm! Alarm! False Alarm!

2006-06-01T11:22:00.000-07:00

A film I wrote and directed is going to be in the Brooklyn International Film Festival

It's called False Alarm

Here's what I wrote for a synopsis: A short film about a slightly taboo, perfectly acceptable expression of love in Contemporary Society.

Will Carlough, Hannah Bos, Seth Berkowitz, Benjamin Ellis Fine, Celeste Balducci, Jennifer Johnson, Matt Elkind and I are up in it.

Matt Elkind shot it.
Pete Fonda recorded sound.
Jennifer Johnson did the lighting and was the gaffer.
Will Carlough composed the score.
Sydney Maresca costumed.
I cut it.

It's going to be playing at The Brooklyn Museum on Saturday, June 3rd at 1PM with a bunch of other shorts in what I believe is a very cool theater within the museum. It costs a little dough to get in but if you're in the mood to see this short on the bigscreen, come on down.

Get thee to the Rooftop!

2006-05-30T11:55:00.000-07:00

An exciting new trend in filmmaking is the resurgence of the short film. Long viewed as simply a calling card for the up and coming filmmaker, short films now are really being made on their own terms. This is due in no small part to the internet and the whole mess of sites and broadband channels hungry for content. It is also now incredibly easy to post your film to sites like youtube or just host them yourself on a personal website. Actually, it's been going on for a while and it makes a lover of the short film medium like myself very happy.

You know what else makes a lover of the short film medium very happy? Or any film lover? Or any New Yorker? Or anybody visiting New York this summer?

Rooftop Films

This film festival - entering it's 10th anniversary summer series - is, truly, one of the best showcases for emerging filmmakers in the country. Every Thursday, Friday and Saturday night this summer - starting this Thursday, June 1st - Rooftop puts together a program of independent shorts and features that is unrivaled in quality. That's what sets them apart. They are a discerning and principled film festival. They take care of their filmmakers, charge minimum fees for film submissions, and again, take great pains to put together their broad spectrum of accepted movies. It's not just broad or balanced - which can make for boring programming. It feels broad and balanced becaused the films are consistently good. They program themed nights which means you can tailor your summer nights to the stuff you'd be interested in seeing. But, I usually end up at a few nights that I wouldn't think would be for me and find a bunch of good shit there.

So, in closing, I recommend rooftopping as much as you can this summer. Their screenings run the gamut of cool locations and venues around New York and the vibe is extremely good at all their events. I've shown movies at Rooftop and am even now on the Board of Directors so my opinion - you could say - is a little biased. But the fact is, I'm proud as hell to be affiliated with such a productive, entertaining and short film celebrating, New York entity.

See you on the roof!

Terminology

2006-05-23T09:43:00.000-07:00

My good friend Eric Z. has officially decreed that women's bathing suits shall now be known as:

Water Panties!

As this has given me great occasion to chuckle over the last few days, I felt it critical to share the news.

Better than I thought

2006-05-01T21:29:00.000-07:00

I just swept/cleaned/looked behind my couch for the first time in 3.4 years. And you know what?

It wasn't that bad.

There were some quarters and a penny, a moderate amount of dust, a few toenails, a subscription renewal card for the New Yorker and some rubber bands. The dust was thick but in the end, it only amounted to one trip to the garbage can.

I had been putting this operation off for some time. I suppose I was scared of what I might find. The last time I cleaned behind a couch was two apartments ago when my housemates and I were moving out. We found forty oz. bottles, a previously thought stolen pair of my favorite sneakers (which I wore for a couple weeks before I psychologically buckled), gluesticks, copious amounts of grime (a term I reserve for moist dust), hardcover and paperback books, a t-shirt, tennis balls, an amazing spectrum of grey and brown carpeting, some spaghetti - the list goes on. It was almost like someone had been living under there.

That couch rendering resulted in a beautiful purge but I think you can see why I might have been reluctant to explore the same space in my current apartment. This time, It was indeed better than I thought it would be.

Despite conventional wisdom, on this one occasion, I take comfort in my laziness and procrastination being justified.

Misanthrope Premiere Party - May 7 at Galapagos

2006-04-21T12:41:00.000-07:00

At 8PM on Sunday May 7th, Aaron Hill & The Crimson Guard AND Casimir Nozkowski present the world premiere of Aaron Hill's new music video: "Misanthrope"

Come to Galapagos in Brooklyn and check out the video (shot in Williamsburg) directed by Casimir Nozkowski and see Aaron Hill play a set off his upcoming album - Classical Strength Through Land.

New Music Video

2006-03-28T13:35:00.000-08:00

Aaron Hill has a new music video I'd like to invite you to see.

Check out Misanthrope.

It's about a ghost haunting a photo booth in a bar.

I directed it.
Kayla Graffam produced it.
Matt Elkind shot it.
Matthew Boccaccio edited it.
Andrew Ulanoff did the graphics.
Oliver Butler was the AD.
Jennifer Johnson and Jamie Northrup were the gaffers.
Paul Nelson was the best boy electric.
Nicole Emmons was the key grip.
Sydney Maresca did the costumes.
Sigal Arad Inbar was the art director.
Cecilia Traini was the set designer.
Mindy Pearmon and Jennifer Suarez did the make-up.
Jonny McNair, Pam Rappaport, Nadia Hajidin and Marc Corsiglia were the PAs.

Mickie Spencer, Hannah Bos, Paul Thureen, Brian Grosz, Benjamin Ellis Fine, Oliver Butler, Cory Feldman, Susan Stewart, Sydney Maresca, Will Carlough, Andy Dickerson, Eugene Cho (who also made the real photo strips), Erin Edmison, Diana Little, Maura Madden, Celeste Balducci, Greg Glassman, Brooke Nessit, Tashi Kaiser were up in it.

Nice work, everyone!

Roofies

2006-03-18T09:42:00.000-08:00

Another office tip that I can offer involves the roof. I work in midtown and previously thought roof access was categorically forbidden. In fact, it's there to be found and explored. Getting 22 floors above my windowless office has been therapeutic.

I met a woman at a party who recently completed jury duty. As it turns out, she was serving alongside a former employee in the building. He told her of the secret path to the New York City skyline - involving an elevator AND a door! It was inspiring to find a new space and easily get up there. Aside from a few lawyers who look out on the roof, it's pretty isolated. The lack of cigarette butts makes me think no one is taking advantage of it. Their loss.

Here's what I'm recommending: Get on your building's roof, have some decaf and throw a paper airplane off the edge.

Socks. Carpeting.

2006-03-16T11:27:00.000-08:00

If you can, I recommend taking your shoes off at work.

It changes everything.

Notes on the little gym where we occasionally play basketball

2006-02-26T12:37:00.000-08:00

For four years, I've been playing basketball in Williamsburg at a little gym called SETT - short for The Settlement House. It's truly a little gym – the managers describe it as 3/5ths of a short full court. Its primary function is as an after-school space for kids in the neighborhood. Upon arriving at the gym on one of the two nights we played a week, we had to spend a few minutes cleaning up the chairs spread around the rubber floor and stuffing everything onto the stage at the back of the gym.

You can’t argue with the price. It’s 60 dollars for two hours – no matter how many people show up. And it hasn’t changed in four years. Services or products that do not arbitrarily raise prices with each year’s passing are few and far between and deserve tribute.

One day I walked into S.Cono's pizzeria on Ainslie and Graham sweaty, in shorts and holding a basketball. Anthony - the son in the family that owned the pizza place, who'd I only sporadically talked to up to that point - asked me if my friends and I wanted to join him and his friends at a gym where they played on Sunday mornings. Hell yeah, I said.

The gym has gone through many changes over the four years we've been there. Originally blessed with the dustiest wood floor this side of some dusty wood floor you know, it made a summertime transition to rubber mats as flooring. Traction increased but so did the volume of almost certainly toxic white powder in my lungs. Some kind of cement or construction byproduct would mushroom out from the mats when yanked out of place.

There is very poor lighting. Little fat funnels – your standard gym light – hang down from the ceiling. Of the 8 there, 2 – 6 are working at any time. The result is often a warmly lit 2/3 of our 3/5ths gym. Swathed in shadow, the stage side of the gym gets a little light from behind the backboard but generally forces you to go on something closer to instinct than aim. This does not always yield satisfactory shooting percentages.

Two giant heaters flank the ceiling, pointing down to the floor. They glare orange-hot when we play in the winter and will nicely roast the gym. As you run by the point of heat-impact, you step through the furnace-type blast with molasses/sauna level intensity. We tend to sweat a lot in the summer when the heating takes it upon itself to supplement New York’s already hot temperatures.

The ceilings. Oh man, the ceilings. You haven’t played real basketball until you’ve modified your naturally-arcing shot to avoid colliding with the unusually low ceilings. Our rules dictated that if the ball scraped the ceiling, it was considered out-of-bounds. This rule is also applied to the pipes that hang even lower than the ceiling on the right elbow of the non-stage-side rim. I am renowned for my ability to hit those pipes WAY more than actually seems possible.

As we leave this winter behind, we find ourselves kicked out of the little gym, displaced by more afterschool programs. We may end up back in the little gym next year when low temperatures and darkness force us to seek alternatives to the outdoor playgrounds where we play the majority of our basketball. But it seems more likely we’ll never return. I’ll miss the walls with limited padding that surround the court. I’ll miss the pit-bull that barks when you open the side-door, wanting so badly to get past its fence and at our throats. I’ll miss my first-ever sprained ankle that occurred the very last night I played at the little gym. It’s better now but feels like an appropriate and romantic finish to my Settlement House era. Like Ted Williams hitting a homerun in his last at-bat except more painful and awkward and unfulfilling.

A Mission of Little Significance!

2005-11-20T22:06:00.000-08:00

A critical aspect of my weekend is brunch. I like eggs. I like coffee. I like having eggs and coffee in the early afternoon and therefore I like brunch. What I do not like are the "gourmet" potatoes that many a brunch place are attempting to pass off as home fries in this young millennium.

Now I'm not trying to knock potatoes. They've been good to me and to many people looking for that most flexible and amenable side-dish. But the time has come for a line to be drawn in the sand between home fries and just plain, cooked potatoes. I call these "home fries/gourmet potatoes" the work of the lazy chef. Instead of victimizing, battering, transforming these potatoes into something beautiful, they've clearly buckled and in an attempt to honor their original shape and texture have ensured my plate is only 2/3 clean.

By chance lately, I've found myself sampling a true spectrum of Brooklyn brunches. I'd kind of done my neighborhood's brunches to death so I merrily took the brunch show on the road. But too many places that I've been to over the past week have served a leisurely chopped up, barely crispy, heavily seasoned boring ole potato and tried to get me to call it home fries. Does anyone else feel this way? Are you satisfied with these lazy potato sides? I for one miss having true home fries - heavily cooked, practically mashed and extra crispy home fries. I'm not talking about the almost as satisfying hash browns that are out there but in fact, the true home fries that lately it seems can only be found in your basic diner.

I'm looking for more of a mash - crisped and textured and thrilled to be run through the ketchup. If you know of such a place, please advise. I shall be stockpiling addresses for future brunches.

I am on a mission - slight though it be.

Hot Cop

2005-11-13T08:29:00.000-08:00

Sometimes I see male cops with attractive female cop partners. In the three or so such pairings I've noticed, the male cop is often conversing with the partner with a certain joie de vivre, exhibiting an air of contentment.

Conversely, I've seen a couple police partnerships as of late between two usually hefty gentlemen, where they look like they want nothing to do with eachother. Now clearly I'm not seeing the full range of experience by simply walking past these pairings on a subway platform, but it does lead me to wonder... is the prospect of a hot partner something cops spend a considerable amount of time thinking about? When paired with a fat male partner who shares none of the same interests and only serves to hold up a mirror to their own weight struggles, how long does the disappointment last? How often does a male cop think about sleeping with his female partner? If it were me, I would think about it a lot.

Good thing I am not a cop.

My Dumb Theory

2005-11-04T08:55:00.000-08:00

Humans mark time in lots of ways. A watch. A calendar. Stonehenge. And of course, the annual rite of the birthday. That's where I come in. I have turned 29 today and so I thought it appropriate to espouse my theory on why there shouldn't be birthdays.

It's not because I am bitter about turning 29. I love birthdays. I love November 4 - when my own and many friends' birthdays fall (Diddy, Markie Post, Art Carney, Tabu, Walter Cronkite, etc). This is a great season for birthdays too. But the fact remains, humans might be able to achieve a greater sense of peace without worrying so much about who they are in relation to what age they are - psychosomatically slowing themselves down in the process. Imagine if you will a world without birthdays:

You know what year you were born so if you need it, you can always compute your age. This would still be handy for voting, army-joining and drinking - all involving decisions better made with a few years experience under one's belt. But at the same time, you don't have the weight of lifespan contemplation weighing on your shoulders. I stopped wearing a watch in College because it was just a constant and unhealthy reminder that class had 40 minutes left till the end, 39 minutes, 38 minutes, 37, etc. Birthdays are analagous to wearing a watch with the average lifespan being the end of class. I'm 29 and so I only have 50 more years, 49, 48, etc.

I did once have a watch that could translate words in 10 different languages. If birthdays were analagous to that particular watch, perhaps I wouldn't complain so much. I know. That doesn't make sense. Also, I digress.

Without birthdays, it has been suggested that humans would be deprived of the one day yearly that makes them feel special. I say to that, humans should feel special on more than one day a year! I believe that instead of saving up the specialness for one measly ole day, the good feeling I hope humans would want to show other humans would be spread across many days and nights a year. Yes, lazy people who wait for birthdays to show their affection for other people might mess things up. But I like to think that without one day to depend on, humans would more than account for the birthday void with perhaps sweeter, more frequent demonstrations of love and respect. Isn't it cooler to just be taken out for dinner for no reason?

A friend of mine said that if I deprive my kids of birthday parties, he would punch me in the nose. I certainly wouldn't start enacting this plan without some amount of support. "I'd love to come to your birthday party Rachel but my dad doesn't allow me to celebrate birthdays. You should read his blog from 15 years ago to fully appreciate his psychosis, I mean, point."

Getting back to my watch (or lack thereof) analogy, it has also been said that I am late to events all too often. Though I'm trying to get better, it is indeed the case and perhaps accentuated by my timekeeping nonchalance. But in this case, wouldn't taking less stock of your age and how old you should feel only psychosomatically keep you more fit? I'm 29 and physically feel as good as I ever have in my twenties. Knowing that I'm approaching 30 though certainly slows my step on occasion as I stop and think that I am indeed getting old and getting to the point when some people have given up basketball, hard drinking, etc. I am a suggestible fellow however and when people tell me, 'well, we're getting old, we can't do this, that or the other,' I nod and think that perhaps they are right. If other suggestible people like myself were suddenly stripped of their birthday watch, they might in fact be more late for conventional endings, slowing downs and passings of eras. I don't think anyone would complain about that kind of tardiness.

Lest you think I am just being a grouch about birthdays, here is a flipbook type sequence of me merrily, drunkenly drinking a final shot of whiskey at 4AM on my birthday. I had a ton of fun.

Jay-Z, Mrs. Pac-Man, and Hepatitis!

2005-10-24T21:32:00.000-07:00

What do those three things have in common?

I was in proximity to all of them this weekend!

(Awkward pause)

Friday night, I went to a friend of a friend's birthday party at the 40/40 club, Jay-Z's spot on 25th St. Accordingly, I didn't know anyone but my friend and spent a lot of time nodding to some hits and watching bigscreen ESPN. I expect to get hassled anytime I go to a club. You know, for my guns and knives. Or in reality, I just wear sneakers a lot and clubs tend to frown on the lazy, comfortable dresser. But Jayhovah is looking out for the casual clubgoer and those bouncers welcomed us with open arms. And by open arms, I mean wildly expensive drinks. But that didn't stress me either. Actually, I expected nothing less and thought the expensive drinks completed the experience. Buckets of PBR would have been nice but they wouldn't have gone with the throwbacks nor bathroom attendant. Drinkwise, I had the 40/40 which cost 12 dollars and is like a milkshake but in a martini glass. The party was in the Jay-Z lounge which had a bigscreen TV and hip hop blasting out of NICE speakers. I like me a club that rocks some loud hip-hop that's easy on the treble and thusly, easier to talk over. The club is named for the few baseball players that have hit forty homeruns and stolen forty bases in the same season. This shortlist includes Jose Canseco who is now one of the most reviled players in baseball for his glib outing of the league's steroid users. It was funny to be at a club that was celebrating a once artificially dominant athlete who also happens to be one of the most recent members of the Surreal Life. But then again, Flavor Flav was on the Surreal Life and he's my homey.

Hepatitis? That was Saturday night. I screened a movie on a boat! Have you seen this movie recently? It's nuts. I'm super proud of it as much for the liberating unreality of it as the stormy weekend that tested our production. Anyway, there were two other films shown there. The last one - Lavender Lake - was a fifty minute documentary about the Gowanus Canal in Brooklyn (where the boat we were in was floating). It was a great doc, shot on film, and paced lovingly. The canal that everyone was stepping over to get in this boat-party was explained to have at various polluted times in its life carried things like strains of Typhus, Hepatitis and the odd fellow late on his loanshark payments. Good party with good borscht though! It rained heavily during the movies and made me feel like I was at camp - slightly nauseous camp but camp.

Sunday, I fucked up Mrs. Pac-Man! Well, I ate a lot of ghosts and you know... ROCKED the high score on the missus at BarCade. Normally, I wouldn't feel the need to report this showing of truly uninspiring skill, but I thought that the triptych that was this weekend would make for colorful juxtaposition. If you haven't been to Barcade in Williamsburg, consider it recommended. My favorite games there: Arkanoid, Crystal Castles, Moon Patrol (which is motherfucking hard) and of course the lady Pac-Man. Games that I once thought were great but are not: Dig-Dug, Beserk, Punch-Out (but only because I can't dodge to save my life).

How was your weekend?

Consolidation

2005-10-21T11:18:00.000-07:00

I fully support the technology that is being created right now to make my life easier. Devices, programs and doodads that make me more productive while saving me time and energy are certainly hard to argue with. I like a coffee pot that not only wakes you up but brews a cup of coffee for you to grab on your way out the door. I like my television with the DVD player and VCR built into its one frame. I like anything wireless and my ability to use wireless things with nary a concern for proximity to its base station (I like to use my bluetooth keyboard from the fire escape outside of my office).

What presents a minor conundrum for me is the threshold of technological progress. That is to say, the goal of major progress is to consolidate tasks into ever smaller amounts of space and time. I don't profess to know what the limit is for this goal but I do know there is a limit. Or in more specific terms, I am bored of my ipod.

That's right. I am bored of the nearly 8,300 songs on my ipod. You know, that 19 days worth of music I carry around in digital form? Yawn. All those CDs I digitized so I could have them with me at all time? I'm over them. There is something about having my entire collection at my fingertips that has led me to cycle through the list of artists on my ipod and think way too often that I have nothing I want to listen to. Most of this malaise I think comes more from my perception of my circumstances than from a flaw in the ipod's design. But there is something to making human existence TOO easy that I think can inspire this feeling.

It's not that I ever relished the moments of digging through my CD shelves for the one CD I thought would capture the mood I was in. Due to poor organizational skills, these moments of digging took way too long and paid off in pretty fleeting dividends ("Oh damn, that Wall of Voodoo album is… okay!") However, I certainly never looked at my wall of CDs and thought, wow, there's just nothing good here. There was always something worth finding. It's possible that the simple act of search and appreciate, followed by the opening of a CD case and the insertion of said CD into the stereo insured that I would always have a commitment to the music I was playing. The fact that it would take another few minutes to find another CD also made me stick with the one I was playing longer. The ipod has such a perfect interface, it makes fast-forwarding through slightly imperfect songs very tempting. Is that bad? I'm not sure. A lot of the best listening experiences have to do with discovery. To have too much control of the experience can limit that sensation.

Also, Netflix. You've made my movie-watching experience too easy, Netflix. How dare you?!? Netflix subscriptions generally work like this. You get one. You fill out a massive queue of movies and then wait for them to roll in. The first 10 you blaze through, sending them back the same day you get them, thinking to yourself, ha ha Netflix, this month, you're losing money! The next 10, you slow down a little, maybe even hanging on to that obscure documentary for a full three weeks but still rotating the other two titles regularly. The third 10: it's curtains. It takes a week or two just to get through one movie. You start to resent the red envelopes showing up in your mailbox and sitting on top of your TV. Yet because of your commitment to Netflix, you also don't go to the video store anymore. Is this what FreshDirect is like? Do you start enjoying your food less because you didn't go to the store to buy it yourself? Would I like Netflix better if the packages were harder to open?

I was once at a conference my company – a cable TV channel – was having, listening to their plans for the future. This was in 2000 and the industry was flush and full of money. I remember hearing the speakers talk about how with the advent of TiVO, it was going to be harder to get people to watch commercials and thusly give companies reasons to pay for commercials. Setting aside the fact that this kind of discussion is pretty dull for someone who likes uninterrupted movies on TV, I took note of their proposed method for circumventing this new device with an even newer device: The Internet Television. That wasn't actually its name but its goal was to consolidate your online experience with your broadcast experience, in their eyes increasing the potential for impulse buying ("Holy Shit, that guy on that show is eating a tasty sandwich. I am going to order a tasty sandwich from this online deli.") and relegating the commercials to the online space of the TV. My channel - which is part of a bigger company - was going to roll out this device itself and assumed that doing so would ignite a buyer's frenzy. It's possible that other things grabbed their attention but after that conference and a few weeks of buzz, the device never really made it, caught on or took over the market. With little evidence, I always assumed that the product made life TOO easy. People who sit on the couch watching a lot of TV, I think, like to at least have the option of going online in another room of the house or if in the same room, at least, diverting their eyes to a different screen and replacing their remote with a keyboard.

I have to say that condemning two things I actually do enjoy like the ipod and Netflix is a little crazy (maybe the Internet TV is actually the key to happiness). As is arguing against progress. You can't argue for progress to stop. You generally can't identify what you've got as just right (I once thought my imac of several years ago was the fastest I would ever need a computer to be. Then I started rendering things... overnight.) If you're lucky, you can tell when you've got too much and then hopefully, you just have to reconfigure your perspective and take advantage of it. If there's more progress to make, it's probably better you embrace it, try it, and if it helps, use it. If it don't, go back to making your own paper and powering your lightbulb with a bicycle. Saving time is great provided you have things you want to spend that time on. Maybe that's my complaint. My argument is with myself. On days when I'm deep in my ipod and watching my scratched Netflix disc of Team America, my frustration is based in the time I'm saving and not using, that instead of using, I'm applying to further shortcuts. The shortcuts sack my joi de vivre and I end up not liking the music I own or the opportunity to watch movies delivered to my door. Man, I sound lame. I'm not trying to argue a techno-philosophy. Basically, I heard someone say they were sick of their ipod and in the past I'd found myself feeling the same, irrational way. Human perception, you crazy!

There was an old Mad Magazine where Earth in 20,000AD consists of little atrophied blobs who ride around in bubble cars (the fifties version of future cars always involved spheres) and have everything they could ever want within their little, weak arms' reach - the victims of a lifetime of unfettered progress. They had little propellers on their heads and very few teeth.

My point: If in the future, we're to wear little propellers on our heads and have very few teeth, it will be a bleak future indeed.

Your Kids Hate You

2005-09-28T12:59:00.000-07:00

Directors, Writers and Actors who make aesthetic choices based on their children should stop.

I was leafing through a copy of Entertainment Weekly when I came across an interview with Roman Polanski. In it, he spoke of his desire to make Oliver Twist being directly related to his children. His other films being too violent or too shocking for pre-teens, he wanted to make a little sixty million dollar something that his kids would be allowed to see and might appreciate. Now, honestly, I like Oliver Twist as a book and I think Polanski making it into a movie will probably be pretty darn entertaining. But his impulse to make something for his kids echoes an identical intent to which many filmmakers have attributed their worst choices. There are two reasons no one should involve their kids when making movies:

1) Kids are dumb.

- Sorry, but it's true. They haven't read a lot of books and they haven't seen a lot of the world so generally when they want things, they want dumb things. This isn't terrible. They get smarter. But they start off kind of foolish. I, myself, found it enormously entertaining to eat sticks of butter as a child and throw rocks at barns. If a filmmaker had asked me what type of character I'd like to see in his or her next movie, I would have told them eating butter was awesome, and that the characters should eat a lot of butter and then go have rock-throwing contests and maybe shoot some lasers too. Though I can't back it up with links, I do feel like a few filmmakers have made things based on the likes and dislikes of their children. Jar Jar stepping in poop and saying things like 'Exsqueeze me' sure makes it seem like a child or two were executive producing Episode 1.

2) Your kids will hate you

- When R-rated directors make things for their kids, it just infuriates their children. All kids want to see R-rated films and probably love having a parent who makes dark, edgy stuff. To make one's filmmaking choices more palletable for your children is also a lame way to reach them. Do you think Spielberg's kids are going to grow up and look back on Hook with any fondness? Maybe they'll really respect the guns in E.T. he changed into walkie-talkies. No way. They'll look back on Jaws and Close Encounters and the original E.T. and ignore the times dad compromised a film on their behalf.

Tonight Some Nights Ago

2005-09-21T12:20:00.000-07:00

That's me pointing my finger at Jay Leno on August 10th's Tonight Show. I was in mid-joke there and got a nice laugh shortly thereafter. I swear.

My Crying, While Eating co-creator Daniel Engber and myself were flown out to Los Angeles for an appearance on the same show as Seann William Scott and Aqualung as well as some beach games with Stuttering John to talk about our website, Crying While Eating It was a whirlwind of nice hotels, limo rides, pre-show jitters and post-show adrenalin withdrawal. S. W. S. - super friendly. He actually jumped in during our chat a couple times and diffused some awkward moments. Aqualung - damn nice as well in the post-show, on-air meet & greet. While they were playing, we were all standing on the edge of the stage. Truly, I was trying to listen but kept finding myself distracted by my brain's instant replay: "Fuck! Did I say THAT? Man I hope I didn't sound like an idiot," were just a few of the thoughts running through my over-stimulated mind. Still, what little of the song I parsed, I found catchy. Jay Leno - We had a knuckle-cracking contest that he handily won while we shot promos for the show we had just taped. He couldn't believe we hadn't made any money off of our website. I wish I could say I share his disbelief. As I said on the show (after trying it out backstage), we are terrible businessmen. I have now used that joke three times. I will get some new material and report back.

To everyone who watched: Thanks!

High Time

2005-09-18T10:06:00.000-07:00

Yes, it's been a while. Yes, our readership has dwindled to negative numbers (when we post now, people turn off their computers and sit quietly). And yes, it's time to get back on the blogospherical horse.

I'll keep it brief and anecdotal for the moment:

Yesterday, I went to a bachlor party at one of those brazilian churrascaria restaurants out in Queens. Called the Master Grill, it is essentially the equivalent of sitting at the end of a meat processing conveyor belt. Each table gets a wooden peg with a green top and a red top and uses it to signal the need and hunger for more meat from waiters wandering the restaurant or to signal, 'dear god, we're full, please stop bringing said meat to the table.' If you're a fan of gorging yourself and then using excess meat in any number of whimsical table games (How much meat can YOU cram into a wineglass?!?) AND you LOVE the happy birthday song (played at least a dozen times in the two hours we spent there), go here!

Long story short, a friend of mine stole the red and green peg from the restaurant and has thus far been unsuccessful in applying its power to other locations.

Weird Thing I Saw Today...

2005-08-01T17:45:00.000-07:00

A middle-aged man, eating at the Columbus Circle Whole Foods, eagerly recounting his favorite scenes from Dr. Strangelove to a girl that may have been his 12-year-old daughter. He went into great detail, demonstrating nuances of performance, situational ironies, even giving production-diary-style geneses of certain improvised exchanges. It was like a living DVD complete with extras, played for the wrong audience entirely.

Shut Up & Make Out

2005-07-15T10:56:00.000-07:00

So a couple months ago, The Hazzards and I were, you know, talkin' and we were like, man it'd be fresh to make a video for Shut Up & Make Out - which is a super funny song The Hazzards wrote.

Then we were like, oh, you know what would be double fresh? If we could get a lot of people to make out in the video.

Well, we made that video. A lot of great people made out in it. And a lot of great people collaborated on its production including your nerdcake bloggers, Seth - who did the storyboards - and me, Casimir - who directed it.

I'm very proud of the experience, and the final product which is now... online.

Enjoy!

Last Night

2005-07-03T09:27:00.000-07:00

I bought a pineapple, a whole pineapple, then sat down and ate the entire thing. By the last quarter of it, my mouth was burning, I suppose from all the citric acid. Those last few bites were the hardest.