HOW many hours? I'm hoping against hope that I'll be selected to do a film in this year's 48 Hour Film Project. I mailed in my application by Priority Mail the day of the announcement, so with any luck I'll be one of the first fifteen applications received, and thus guaranteed a slot.

I've already started lining up a crew, and thanks to Greenbelt Access Television, which loans out prosumer cameras and equipment to members, I actually might be able to get some good-looking footage.

I attended GATE's annual meeting on Sunday. I expected it to be a Mickey-Mouse organization, and man, was I mistaken. They have two Sony VX2000s, a Power Mac G4 with Final Cut Pro and DVD Studio Pro, and a very active and knowledgeable membership base, including people who actually get PAID to do film and video. One of the members demonstrated the new Panasonic camera that shoots in 24 frames per second--the same fps as film. (Standard video in North America is 30 fps--actually 59.94 fields per second, but let's not get too technical.) And afterwards, she offered to help with the 48 hour project, and more importantly, offered me an editing gig.

Things be looking up, they be.

Thursday the 13th, and I've been a-busy burning DVDs with command-line tools. What fun!

There, that takes care of my blogging obligations for another week, and I don't have to write about the war.

Bushwhacked. I suppose I really ought to write something about the new "Let's Make a Deal." Not because I watched it (I didn't) and not because I think it's brilliant television (I don't). Rather, because of Billy Bush, former Z104 morning man turned game show host.

And, no, I'm not going to write about his relation to our Commander-in-Fief. I'm going to write about his relationship to me--he went to college with me, and graduated with my class, even. We never hung out or indeed even met. We ran in very different circles.

I was a theater major, and once I was involved in a horrible, nightmarish production of Romeo and Juliet. I was working on something else at the time and joined the cast basically as a favor to the professor who was directing. I had a cameo as the Prince, a small but important role.

As the rehearsals went on, it became clear that I had made a bad, bad decision. So I arranged to be fired--I told the director I was taking a day off for family reasons, he got angry, and I said, look, you can find someone else to play the Prince. So, he fired me, and I waltzed away. I'm not particularly proud of that, in hindsight; it was horribly unprofessional. But, from a student's standpoint, it was the right thing to do.

I went to see the production when it opened. The guy who replaced me (and who played the Prince woodenly, though like a soft wood, maybe pine) was Billy Bush, who had never acted in the four years we had been at Colby, as far as I know.

Do you suppose if I had played the Prince, I would be hosting "Let's Make a Deal" now?

If so... I definitely made the right choice.

(By the way, my graduation speaker was noted atheist-hater George H.W. Bush. What an amazing coincidence!)