Month: October 2004

I was paired up with a fellow film student today. He’s a pretty cool guy that seems to have good ideas and has made some fun stuff. We are told to describe our current film projects about exploring something. This doesn’t take us very long since neither one of us is the sort to overemphasis or wax pretentious (I curb myself as best as I can and never do so in a serious fashion). So we chat about our lives and shit like that. I tell him about how I spent some time down in Riverside while I was an undergraduate. He tells me that he’s from Bakersfield then mentions that he didn’t like Southern California or LA that much. I concur and tell him I only went there for a few concerts. I tell him about seeing The Kids in the Hall when they did their reunion tour back in 2001. Funny enough turns out he was there too. So it’s just another one of those odd ways that people experience things as they live and cross paths maybe countless times never realizing it. It just amused me.

Today has been a rainy windy Tuesday (not as much fun as those Sundays). It started at Midnight with a rerun of Cheers on FOX, it was part one of the two-parter where Sam’s brother comes to town and Sam feels inadequate. Class was fine but I’ve just had this lingering anxiety about midterms. They aren’t too bad but I fear that whole stupid mistake aspect has followed me from the Undergraduate years. I circled the wrong answer to an easy 50:50 type question about light on my Cinema 1 midterm. Just like my brain didn’t understand that it was wrong like telling someone with absolute certainty that something is right when it is left. I do this from time to time and it truly upsets me because I do look things over and I do scrutinize but these thing get past me enough to make me uncertain and discouraged. The great flaw with being human isn’t that we make mistakes, that is inevitable. Rather it is that we (and by this I mean me) make the same mistakes. We are limited by our own biases and flaws and ineptitude. Obviously some more than others or maybe that is just luck of the draw? Still when I think about how successful people often have a haphazard story about how they achieved their ‘fortune and glory” I find it very difficult to attempt to go about living a thoughtful life since intention and expectation is usually the best way to maximize disappointment. I have not reconciled an appropriate method for negotiating this chaotic aspect of life and I doubt I ever will but that doesn’t change much and I suppose that I will continue along the same path no matter how many stupid mistakes I seem determined to make.

Don’t get me wrong I have a pretty sweet DVD player with the 5.1 channel surround sound and I use the hell out of it, I just wish that the stupid format wasn’t so delicate. I take care of my stuff. I’m no materialist but I do enjoy my DVD collection the art is what brings me pleasure not the object. Nonetheless, I’ve found that most other people don’t take very good care of DVD’s and or that they can be easily damaged. Case in point: about 60-70% of the time I rent a DVD (which is rather rare for me since not much new stuff has come out that’s been worth renting or seeing at the cinema) I cannot finish it because the dirt and scratches on the surface of the disc are too severe. It sucks. Once more I’ve found occasions where a DVD I purchased was skipping without these scratches. It occurred on a copy of Goonies and also on a anime called Gungrave. The skip for Gungrave occurred about 5 minutes into the 4th episode on the first volume. This infuriated me I was more interested in viewing that 4th episode than in squabbling with Amazon about a defunct product, so I bought another one cheaper (it was used). CUT TO me fixing to watch this 4th episode all ready to go and low and behold the damn thing starts to skip at the exact same place. Now this is a freakin’ conspiracy! So I’m apt to uncover this and get my money back and a working copy of the 1st volume since episode 4 seemed to be where the show was really gonna pick up. Anyway that’s my world hates me complaint for now.

Today is the first real day of rain up here in the Pacific Northwest. It started early and was quite loud. We get a lot of rain up here and I don’t mind it since that sort of weather has some character. It’s weather that is bland and dull grey-white with a humidity that I mind. That weather has terrible character. I got some homework done yesterday which is new for me since I usually slack on Saturday. Now I can enjoy the stormy weather warm inside and watch a movie or something.

It’s Saturday Friday was a busy one (well not really) but I didn’t post anything. I was thinking about how technology will be a survival issue. Not just the dependence on it but also the willingness to understand it. I find myself in an odd place. I don’t like cellular phones or PDAs or anything like that but I realize that if I am going to be alive for another 60 years or so chances are these pieces of technology will be the standard. Everyone will need to use and understand how to operate these things in order to function in our Post-Modern Post Industrial service sector world. I wonder how in terms of evolution and such this technological revolution will weed out those foolish illiterates who are too stubborn and too bother to learn this stuff and “get with the program”? Will those of us who are young and out of the loop simply be incapable of functioning under this new world order?

For an acting class I’m taking at the local college I have to go see their performance of Romeo and Juliet. Granted this will be the first time I will see this play in a live theatre format but I’ve read it twice already for school in both 8th grade and as a High school freshman and I’m tired of the story. It has its moments with the swords and daggers and stuff but damn. Here I am at a place of higher learning and I’m going to see a play that I already had to deal with when 10 years ago. I know there are better plays out there this is just the luck of the draw but damn if I don’t seriously dislike being stuck in a theatre for 2 hours to see something I just don’t want to see. More often then not I’m finding that even while studying some field that I would like to like I just don’t.

Film and cinema and acting and all that showbiz crap is still school work if you study it in school.

As I force myself to sit down and write this I wonder why it is that at some point life seems to become a series of things we need to do want to do and ultimately will not do so much more often than not. I suppose the evolutionary answer to this question might postulate on our hunter gatherer pre-agrarian ancestral roots to justify this natural inclination for laziness. But now it is a dilemma. People work because they need to survive and it is said that we work that much harder now but I figure it is more that our career has become so connected to our sense of identity. Who knows this might not be a bad thing. There are still creative people that do fun things and people that live their lives but it seems that the average person is perfectly happy doing nothing. So we come from nothing and spend our existence pretty much inclined to do nothing all waiting to go back to nothing. All Existential woe aside. I’m not claiming that if I built a shed I would be doing something of great value for the human race or anything like that. It is more an issue of personal value and it seems odd to me that intentions and ideology often amount to nil due to this inexplicable lethargy.

Though my matter of fact style might appear that I’m being sarcastic I do wish my brother and his band good luck and have spoken to some people at the college radio station about getting them to play a live session when they feel ready. Sarcasm died with the 90’s in my opinion, though a wry wit for irony is still nice.

I was just invited to leave from my brother’s rock band. I think it’s a good thing since I don’t really like “rock” music and was only capable of playing rudimentary chords on a keyboard. I wish the new trio (they got ride of the bass player too) good luck with their process and hope that their second honeymoon period is something that will help them to get out of the creative rut.