Well, I'll be damned!

Who knew that the 48 Hour FIlm Project was indirectly inspired by the great comics artist Scott McCloud?

Hamlet, Revenge, photoshop edition...

Today is my daughter's fourth birthday. Happy birthday, E!

K is watching a documentary on the '84 Olympics. They keep referring to swimmer Michael Gross as "the Albatross." And you know what I keep reciting, don't you? It's driving her crazy.

More movies and potatoes.

I am pleased to announce that <ESC> and Soap Opera will show at the first annual Idaho Panhandle International Film Festival, August 24-26. YES, this is a big deal, damn it!

The median song on my iPod.

By song title, alphabetical order: Love's Made a Fool of You, by Buddy Holly (996 of 1993).

What's yours?

Update: Everyone can play, even if you don't have an iPod!

Musicus.

I really miss making music. Ironically, it was a lot easier when I had fewer choices. Now, I have a bona-fide MIDI keyboard with full-size keys, a professional editing suite, a kick-ass sample library or two, and some other stuff I've barely touched. (Not to mention the acoustic guitar, for that matter; I sold the electrics a month ago.)

So what's stopping me? Time, mostly, I guess. But I also find myself paralyzed by knowledge. I know a lot more about music theory than I used to in the days that I just slapped notes and chords together. For instance, I never knew what a "fugue" really was, so anytime I wrote something contrapuntal, I'd call it a "fugue." I also didn't know what you "needed" to do to introduce key changes, so I would just change keys as the whim struck me. And finally, I didn't know how to play the piano. That meant I just wrote stuff on staves and then had the computer play it out loud, and if I didn't like it, I'd make changes.

Now, I rely on Apple Loops in Soundtrack and GarageBand because they sound so much better than anything I could make myself, and they're a lot quicker. But I've lost the soul, and the joy, of composition in the process.

Prisoner of Trebekistan.

A funny video about winning on Jeopardy. MeTube material?

The Cell-Phone.

"The Cell-Phone" will premiere at the D.C. Shorts Festival on Sept. 14, 2006! If you're in the area, please come on by.

Saucification.

Tuesday night I presented a few of my films at the Speakeasy Screening Room, an offshoot of the Speakeasy, a monthly storytelling event which a friend of mine curates. It was pretty successful, albeit sparsely attended.

My favorite part was seeing the work of WIT Films, an offshoot (so many offshoots!) of Washington Improv Theatre. They do the 48 Hour Film Project every year, just like I used to do. In fact, the first time I was involved was as sound man for one of their films (I set out as a team leader for Dead Horse the following year). But I hadn't seen any of their most recent efforts, including one which won the overall prize for D.C. in 2005. Anyway, they blew me (and another filmmaker who was also featured, IMHO) out of the water. Sigh... Still, it's OK to be bested by really nice people--and just because their stuff was better, doesn't mean that mine is bad.

And it was certainly well-received, don't get me wrong. I just wish there had been time for Duck Sauce, but it got bumped.

Meanwhile, I'm waiting in breathless anticipation for the results from DC Shorts, allegedly coming out this weekend. Fingers crossed...

Bush Pilot.

Oh, this is beautiful.

Pogroms in Delaware.

I just don't understand the people who do this sort of thing. It makes me want to weep. (via Medley.)

Two must-reads from today's Opinions in the Post.

Michael Kinsley on stem cell research:

Stem cells used in medical research generally come from fertility clinics, which produce more embryos than they can use... Usually several of [the embryos] are implanted in the hope that one will survive. Or, to put it another way, in the hope that all but one will not survive. And fertility doctors do their ruthless best to make these hopes come true. In short, if embryos are human beings with full human rights, fertility clinics are death camps -- with a side order of cold-blooded eugenics. No one who truly believes in the humanity of embryos could possibly think otherwise.

And E. J. Dionne on Mexico's election:

Another thing: Whichever one of you is ahead at any given point, please don't ask that the counting be stopped abruptly just because you happen to hold the lead. Don't have some high-class lawyer with a name like Jaime A. Panadero III come out and say things like, "I don't believe that the people of Mexico want this national election turned over to lawyers and court contests" -- and then have the very same lawyer direct other lawyers to go to court to stop any further counts.

This is really depressing.

Welcome MeTube!

Since, as a general rule, I only add folks to my blogroll who I know personally (or, in the case of Anti-Linear Brain, sorta know personally), it's very rare that I add new links. But my college chum Patrick (known to regular Spicers mostly by a pseudonym) has finally jumped off the bridge that everyone else jumped off in 2002 or so, and started a blog. So, welcome!

The trick is that it's neither a journal nor "online magazine"; he finds and links to a new YouTube video each day. So far, my favorite is (of course) the Beatles doing the "rude mechanicals" scene from A Midsummer Night's Dream. Not only because of their entirely believable and deep performance, but because it may contain the most obvious Paul-is-dead clue in the canon.

Fonebone!

I had to link to this Onion Radio News item. It's a must for any MAD magazine fan.

I made my own Mandelbrot Set generator!

Have a wallpaper on me.

This has been taking up my time lately. Check it out.

What's on my mind.

If Ruby Tuesday and T. G. I. Friday's merged, would they call themselves I Never Could Get the Hang of Thursdays?

Paging Chevy Chase.

Hello, I'm in Norfolk, Virginia, and you're not.

Virginia Beach on a Friday is just like Ocean City used to be when I was a kid, before it got really really REALLY popular. And Manteo, North Carolina, where we were yesterday, is just beautiful.

And of course, there's nothing quite like taking a vacation on the government's tab.

(Note to the GAO: No, we didn't really make the Feds pay for our vacation. K had a meeting in Manteo, yes, and we all turned it into a mini-vacation, but we paid for all the recreational stuff ourselves. And really, why are you investigating a mid-level civil servant, when you should be going after the war crimes of the Bush administration?)

Oh my god.

"BLITZER: One of the other explosive charges you have in the book is that the U.S. deliberately bombed the Al Jazeera offices in Kabul to make a point. You write this: 'On November 13, a hectic day when Kabul fell to the Northern Alliance and there were celebrations in the streets of the city, a U.S. missile obliterated Al Jazeera's office. Inside the CIA and White House there was satisfaction that a message had been sent to Al Jazeera.'

"Are you suggesting that someone in the U.S. government made a deliberate decision to take out the Al Jazeera office in Kabul?

"SUSKIND: My sources are clear that that was done on purpose, precisely to send a message to Al Jazeera, and essentially a message was sent."

(via White House Briefing.)

Pearls Before Swine.

Say it with me now... "It's funny because it's true."

I'm off to North Carolina with the fam for a couple days. Be good.

Let us now praise the iTunes Music Store.

How else could I have given 99 cents to ELO because of a Doctor Who episode?

Truism #453.

Trimming one's toenails while watching the first episode of "Lost" on DVD is what Father's Day is all about.

Dangling participle department.

LITTLETON, Colo., June 16 -- Recalling "one of the darkest days" of his presidency, Bill Clinton wielded a shovel along with bereaved family members Friday for the groundbreaking of a memorial to the 12 students and one teacher at Columbine High School who were killed seven years ago.

How does one wield bereaved family members, anyway?

The little feet of tadpoles...

Been trying GNU Lilypond again for the hell of it. Barnes and Noble was selling a Dover score of the complete Brandenburg concertos for four bucks; that's, oh, 75% off, one of those deals that grabs you by the collar and drags you to the checkout page. Especially when you have a B&N gift card left over from Christmas. So, since Mutopia had to remove their copy of the Brandenburgs for legal reasons, and the Dover edition is a simple reprint of Bach-Gesellschaft's out-of-copyright edition, I thought I'd check out Lilypond again and see if it was any easier to deal with now than when I last fooled with it two or three years ago.

It's certainly easier to install. No more fiddling with individual packages on the command-line, no more awful, out-of-date Fink, just a simple Mac OS X app that you drag-and-drop. Of course, you're still entering music via a text-editor and a somewhat obscure markup language (well, one you get used to it it's not so obscure). Still, when you come right down to it, it's probably faster than point-and-click entry in a notation program; and not too much slower than playing everything in with a MIDI keyboard. (At least for me, given what a horrid keyboardist I am, and how annoying it is to set up my Keystation. Oh, for a dedicated music studio!)

Yesterday I typeset most of the first movement to Eine kleine Nachtmusik, which was a lot of fun. Of course, the beautiful score is just a side effect; mostly, I want the MIDI output to shove into Pro Tools and finesse with GPO, to create the all-important public domain recordings that are my passion. That's the main reason I didn't start with the 3rd Brandenburg (which you may recall I've been working on in GPO); I already have the public domain MIDI from before the scores were removed, so what's the point?

Lilypond as MIDI sequencer? Boy, I'm weird.

(I recall someone once wanted lute tablature. It's a lot closer now.)

Schwa...

GHOTI!

Rhapsodic!

Oh my gosh, this is a real find: Rhapsody in Blue (part 1 and part 2), as performed by the Paul Whiteman Orchestra, with Gershwin himself at the piano.

This was recorded acoustically, before the microphone was invented. Sonically it's about as good as one could expect from 1924, but my gosh! what history!

Schwa?

Schwa!

Schwa?

Schwa.

Cat Bites Bear.

Oh, this is too damn funny.

Back to Basics.

Well, our family has gone back to that rarefied group of people who don't get cable news channels. Which is not to say we've abandoned cable entirely, oh no. Unfortunately, we're too addicted to the Comcast internet speed to go back to DSL or--horrors!--dial-up. (In truth, my line of work makes it essential to have broadband--how can one do Internet video without it?) But the simple fact is that we just don't watch enough television to merit having the billions and billions of channels we had under a limited-time discount which wasn't a discount anymore. So, down to basic cable--local channels and C-SPAN. We did elect to keep the high-definition converter box for an additional five bucks a month, so we can see every pore on Ty Pennington's face when we watch Extreme Makeover: Ikea Edition.*

K was in Florida all week, leaving me to be a bachelor with kids. Surprisingly there were (as of this writing) no major crises, although E did come down with a slight fever. I kept my temper, the kids didn't misbehave; all was good. Last night I ran my first memebership meeting as the Board President of E's nursery school. Oh, did I mention that I was tapped to be President? Let this be a lesson to you all: DON'T VOLUNTEER. (I kid, I kid. It should be a good year, and to be honest, the Presidency is more in line with my temperament than being Treasurer, which I was this past year. After all, now I can lower tuition and raise spending, not to mention order the invasion of other nursery schools to destroy their Play-Doh of mass destruction liberate the oppressed children.)

Finally, here's my latest version of the Brandenburg Concerto, now with all three movements and cheesy reverb! I gotta get me a proper impulse response plug-in someday. The third movement is just straight from the MIDI, no work done on phrasing, volume, etc., so it's not what it should sound like, yet. This will be the last update until it's done, I think. Enjoy.

*We don't actually watch this show. At least, not anymore. It was better when they weren't famous enough to invite B-list celebrities to slum with 'em.

If a harpsichord falls in the forest, does it make a sound?

I get the feeling I'm talking to myself again.

Third try, with more keyswitching and slurring on the violins. Also, everything was bumped up to the "brightest" mod wheel setting in GPO, which had the side effect of pushing the harpsichord way back in the mix. On the whole, needs a LOT more work...

Brandenburg again.

Second attempt, with some keyswitch work on the violins, and what will make the most difference: no double bass, only harpsichord for the continuo.

GPO returns.

Here's a little something for you to listen to.

First attempt at Bach's third Brandenburg Concerto, first and second movements. The second movement in particular needs more tweaking (ha!). This version has no dynamics and the continuo part is as of yet unrealized, but I'm quite impressed with how good the solo instruments sound even without any fancy keyswitching or pedal-work. Well, except the violas...

I included a double bass to join the basso continuo. I'm torn as to whether it will remain or not. Mostly I just don't know whether it's appropriate to the period. Anyone know?

"Dick Cheney is armed with a knife! From Jeff Smith's story: Cheney, Libby said, 'often will cut out from a newspaper an article using a little penknife that he has' and 'look at it, think about it.' Cheney was obsessed with Joe Wilson's Times Op-Ed. He and Libby talked about it multiple times a day. Cheney would look at the Wilson clipping, slide it around his desk, put it in a drawer, take it back out, fondle it, hold it up to the light, and then in an explosion of rage STAB IT REPEATEDLY with the penknife. Right? I mean you can just picture it."

Did I mention my sister works here?

It's funny 'cause it's true.

If Al Gore were President, from Saturday Night Live.

Letter to the editor.

Warren C. Herz of Washington gets it:

Buried on Page A18 of the May 3 paper in the World in Brief compendium were a couple of paragraphs about a new Amnesty International report for the U.N. Committee against Torture.

The report states that torture and inhumane treatment are "widespread" in U.S.-run detention centers in Afghanistan, Iraq, Cuba and elsewhere.

This is our country. We are responsible for this. We demonstrate against the horrors of Darfur. Why are we accepting this? It's being done in our name.

Renderer's Lament.

Dontcha hate it when you wake up after an all-night render and discover that you forgot to change the frame range, and have re-rendered everything you had already rendered the night before? Or when you discover that a different all-night render was ruined because a constraint went haywire after a Save As?

Thought not.

Ikea Walkthrough v2.3.1

Hat tip to my wife for finding this.

Quote of the day.

"I bet you're going to be an actress, just like your daddy!" -- my wife, to our daughter.

A future a day keeps the boredom away.

Now here's a great place to hang out: 365 Tomorrows, a site which publishes a new piece of (very) short speculative fiction every single day. Maybe you already knew about it. If not, now you do.

Arrrrrrgh!

I'm such a sucker for comic-book movies!

Note:

World War I Ace option not available on a Macintosh 128K.

The wife is away for three days on business. I'm already lonely.

No, it's not a big bite; I can chew it just fine!

A friend of mine once said he had a pathological fear of letting people down. (Then again, maybe he said "spiders." That doesn't lead into this blog entry very well, though.) Lately, I feel like all I've done is let people down, mostly because I've over-committed myself in the World of Animation.

• I am an animator for a project being produced by Hash, Inc. In this case I've already let them down, because I originally signed up to be an animation director, but as the project began to spiral far beyond its original parameters, and I felt more and more like I was drowning, I asked to be demoted. Now, I can't even meet my animation demands.


• I told the cast and crew of Dracula that I would produce a spoof animation, and send them all a copy with the DVD of the play. That was in October, when the show closed. I've barely started, and frankly the thought of doing it is painful, mostly because I really, really hate the character designs I came up with. But what else can I do but work with what I have?


• Some stupid idiot decided it would be Good Practice for me to produce a new animation each week, and for a while, it was. But the podcast is destroying any time I have for other projects, and to add insult to injury, I'm hemorrhaging viewers even as I make sure to stick to a schedule. I had nearly 800 people at one point, and now it's just over 300 (which, admittedly, is still more people than have ever read Rooster Spice on a regular basis).


• Finally, I still have an open offer of a paying!!!! commission which is now two years old--and what have I done to further its completion? Nothing.

It's enough to make one wish for a nice cuddly arachnid.

My sister works here. Aren't you jealous?

Hu's on first?

No, actually, Hu's in Seattle.

Do this.

Hit this link and help NTodd reach his arbitrary goal. Now. I'm waiting...

Groan, creak, grrrumph.

I'd like to wish everyone a happy holiday. I refer, of course, to the season premiere of Dr. Who.

And the kudos just keep a-coming.

I got an email yesterday:

I've been a fan of yours since I stumbled onto your vidcast several months ago. I kinda got behind on viewing them and just today saw Soap Opera for the first time.
Oh... my.... God! I just can't come up with enough superlatives. That is one of the most incredible and inspired works I've ever seen. You work has always at least mildly amused me, but this was PURE GREATNESS! The music, the singing, the graphics, the concept ... true creative genius!

I just hope sometime, somewhere, somehow I run into you at a tradeshow or something so I can shake your hand. You are a truly awesome creative spirit. Keep it up.

And <ESC> was just invited to the Milwaukee International Film Festival. Sometimes, things go right.

It was four years ago today.

Why isn't this working?

Did you know the original meaning of the word scumbag?

As dew in Aprille...

Spring break is next week. Ah, for the days when that meant a week at a Florida beach!

When were those days, exactly? I could never afford the trip.

Now it just means several full days spent trying to keep the little boy and girl from ripping each others' throats out.

Unbelievably, Rooster Spice will be four years old on Sunday. Celebrate as you see fit.

La pellicola corta piccola che potrebbe.

Well, yay me. <ESC> was just invited to the SEDICICORTO International Film Festival Forlì, in Italy no less. Funny that Soap Opera wasn't, and it's actually in Italian. (Of course, the English translation is... erm... different than the actual Italian.)

I wonder when I'm going to start feeling like a one-hit wonder? But at least I'm now an INTERNATIONAL one-hit wonder!

Message received?

It's the silence that's killing me; a reply, whether good or ill, would at least be a resolution. It would also let me know whether I've caused great trouble, or (as I suspect) I'm not even a blip on a radar screen. Whatever the case, I can't do anything about it; I've worn out my welcome already, and probably eliminated any small chance of friendship there might have been.

Phonetic danger.

My folks are attempting to sell two homes at once, for reasons I won't go into, but have to do with Precarious Financial Situations. Yesterday morning, a buyer called who had fallen in love with the farmhouse in the country. My stepfather was on a plane, so my mother text-messaged him to let him know, and read the message aloud as she was writing it:

"Australian couple interested, 6 mil, offer in July or August."

My jaw hit the floor. "6 mil?!" I stammered. "I thought you guys were poor because of all this...!"

Mom looked at me blankly, and then said, "6 Mill Road. It's the address!"

Back on the farm.

Well, here I am in Just-Outside-Of-Philadelphia, visiting my mom and stepfather, writing a blog entry on my sister's very annoying Toshiba laptop... why I even had to install Firefox before I could do anything! The horror, the horror! And if I hit "home" one more time when I mean to hit backspace, I'm going to scream. I never truly appreciated the simplicity of my PowerBook's keyboard layout until now.

Although I admit this Compose Mode thing for Blogger is pretty nice (it doesn't exist in Safari, alas).

Had great fun for April Fool's Day. I rented a car to come up here, and even though I had asked for an Economy vehicle, they gave me a free upgrade to a Cadillac (!), so I told everyone that it was my new car. Mom even added the wrinkle that K "had bought it for Zach for his birthday." No one bought it, though. If it had been a Mini Cooper I think we could have had them going.

And in other news, it's still not going away. Maybe it's time to write a song... that's always been good therapy in the past.

I am an April fool.

It's not going away, damn it. It's not going away.

MUST... STOP...

Site Meter strikes again.

Ya know what I hate? People who search for my name (or a portion of it, anyway) but don't tell me why. Come on, tell us who you are! It's not like privacy actually exists in this world or anything.

And another thing!

I got two compliments on Soap Opera today: one from a gentleman who had seen it in Cleveland and requested a DVD copy, and another from someone who saw it on the vodcast and said "Today at school I kept singing, 'Don Ivory, I have come to clean your bathroom!' " It's always nice to hear that sort of thing. And those compliments are for you too, Godfrey, as I'm sure you know.

Did I mention the freshly repainted schools?

Far too often, I blog only when things are going poorly, which leads those people who read my blog and care about me (all three of you) to conclude that my life is a cesspool of shame and depression, rife with missed interventions, pain, and self-pity. Well, believe it or not, even when this is the case, I do have some sense of perspective, and so I thought I'd share some good things that have happened, mostly unrelated to the things that I've complained about over the past few weeks.

• My son, D, who is slightly autistic, is now learning and performing at his grade level for the first time ever, according to his teachers at a recent review of his IEP (individual education plan).
• I was recently elected President of the board of directors for my daughter E's cooperative nursery school, for the 2006-2007 school year. (Of course, this is "good" news--note the scare quotes.)
• I'm also substituting for the nursery school's administrator while she's out sick, so I'll actually earn a real, physical paycheck for the first time in many years.
• I'm going to be a groomsman at a wedding in late April--one of my best friends from college is marrying a wonderful woman (also a good friend of ours, now) whom he met while at graduate school.
• Two short films of mine, <ESC> and Soap Opera, were shown at the Cleveland International Film Festival two weekends ago.
• Noises Off, despite all the, ahem, heartache, was a smashing success, and if you missed it, you should feel bad.
• The vast majority of my family is not in prison.
• I am, despite my best efforts to fuck things up, still married to a gorgeous Swede (excuse me, now I must take a cold shower).

Now what?

It's over!!!!!

And now I can get on with my life, and hurt the people I love in my usual, subtle fashion, instead of the blatant crap I've been pulling lately.

Copycat.

I've decided I'm going to copy Medley and put up a list of "Books Read in 2006." (At least, I think I'm copying her. I mean, I'm sure she's not the first one who thought of it, though that's certainly possible; she's been on the web a long time.) I'm not sure how I'm going to do this, just yet, because I don't want to edit the darn template every time I read something. I'm thinking of tagging an Amazon (or other) link every time I finish a book, and using the tag feed; there must be a way to splice that into the sidebar, right? Suggestions welcome...

Anyway, at the moment it's going to be heavy on Kage Baker's Company novels, which if you haven't read, you really should.

Update: Well, that was easy. Now you can all be jealous of my lit'ry pretentions.

"Why did you grow a beard?" -- They Might Be Giants

For once, I'm ahead of the trend. Of course, I've been telling everyone I'll shave once Noises Off closes, so...

Can YOU make your own decisions?

Heh. (Originally from here.)

Fortran porn?

Input: Reason. Output: Pleasure.

Grated cheese.

Medley writes:

Apart from all that maturity above, though, you've reminded me why I'm glad my spouse doesn't have time to do any community theatre!

Besides making me LOL, that comment reminded me of a conversation long ago in college (with Mike, I think), when we were wondering whether acting was a particularly dangerous thing to do if one is susceptible to crushes. Or, since correlation does not equal causality, perhaps it's acting itself that causes dangerous crushes, hence all the crazy Hollywood marriages one hears about.

Certainly that's the case for me, and it's probably good that I wound up falling for a scientist instead of an actress/musician/etc. (though K is actually an excellent visual artist in her own right), because I doubt any of the crushes I've had would have worked out for more than, say, a month or so if that. And there have been a lot of them, though this one has been one of the worst (otherwise I wouldn't be so broken up about it), second only to one which nearly broke up our marriage (although in truth, there was a LOT more going on than that--this was just before I was diagnosed with clinical depression).

But to return to the topic at hand... is there something about acting that increases the intensity of infatuation? Or if not acting, performance in general? I mean, I get on stage not for the process, certainly not for the audition thrill (?!?!?), but for the applause. And if you have a cast to whom you're close, that applause tends to bind you together--at least for that moment--in a profound way. Does it create something else beyond just the closeness of a cast? I don't know, since I've never acted with anyone with whom there was a mutual attraction. (Not just because I've been with K for essentially all of my adult life; I'm sure my manifest unattractiveness has something to do with it.)

I don't know. My stepfather once joked that I turned 40 when I turned 14, and he might have been right; unfortunately, I managed to turn 14 when I turned 22, and that's pretty much where I've remained in the subsequent 12 years...

(No, the title has no relation to the post. Sue me.)

Update.

The good news is that the crush seems to be dissipating with time. The bad news is, I don't want it to.

At least I was honest with my wife (had been long before the previous blog entry, so it's not like she read it in the newspaper). Telling her helped with the guilt a lot. Of course, I dare not ask how much it hurt her. She says she's OK. Certainly, I was the one wailing and crying, not her, so...

In other news, I'm considering disabling anonymous comments. Come on, at least leave a pseudonym, people!

Spring in the air.

First day of spring, and it's snowing in Washington.

I will conquer this.

And so it continues, every fucking day... the ache in my heart, the images in my head, the inability to see all the good I have going for me, simply because of one thing I cannot have...

It's a fucking mess, and I don't know what to do other than wait it out. And yet, to wait it out seems to be even more painful than anything else, because there is forever the "what might have been?"

My son and daughter smile and laugh, and my wife hugs me... I'm loved right here and now, and yet I want to be away, gone, somewhere, somewhen, and somewho else. All for... what? A fancy? A joke? A flick of hair?

Nothing will come of it; nothing can come of it, for should I try, I'll destroy everyone I hold dear; not to mention I will lose any semblence of respect for myself.

And yet, though next week should be a relief, because the temptation will be gone, I find myself dreading it, because the temptation will be gone. And at this one particular, infinitesimal slice of time, I can't live without it.

Extremism comes to Maryland.

My son's school bus driver is a surly old man who never even acknowledges anyone's existence, despite the numerous times I've said "good morning" to him. (And no, he isn't hard of hearing, because I have had a conversation with him, once.) This morning, he gave me another reason to dislike him: he was wearing a baseball cap emblazoned with "Minute Man Project."

For those who don't know the ins and outs of the Minutemen, who are a vigilante group dedicated to "protecting" the U.S. border with Mexico (and who may or may not be the reason the number of border crossing deaths spiked last year), I recommend perusing David Neiwert's blog.

What I find most interesting is the clear connection between the Minutemen and white power/white supremacist groups... and that D's bus driver is African-American.

Update: Right after I wrote this, I caught up with some leftover Washington Post vodcasts that I had downloaded a few weeks ago, including this one, an excellent overview of the new Minutemen chapter in Maryland, as well as the whole "day laborer" issue. Well worth a look.

Lo, the ache/Hath invaded mine guts.

After the third performance of Noises Off (a matinee on Sunday), I went home absolutely ravenous, but surprisingly awake, considering I had been up 'til past midnight every night this week, and running proverbial (possibly literal) miles in the course of playing the part.

K made a delicious dinner, and I took two or three bites, and my body said, "OK, we finally have sustenance. Time to shut down." I nearly fell asleep at the dinner table, and in fact did go to bed at 6:30.

By all rights, I should be relieved for the time off (we don't perform again 'til Friday), but the cast has become such a part of my life I find myself wishing I was still rehearsing. Yes, I'm lonely. Pathetic! And if I'm this lonely now, how will I feel after the show closes on the 25th?

Theater is so frappin' ephemeral. And it causes me so much pain after it ends! I need to grow up, damn it, and stop acting like a lovesick teenager.

Why, it almost sounds like 2002!

When I act in plays I don't get sleep; when I don't get sleep I get depressed; when I get depressed I get bitchy; when I get bitchy I take it out on my wife and kids. So every time I do a play, I take my life into my own hands.

So why do I do plays? Back when I was doing it for money, the answer was obvious: money. Of course, the enjoyment factor was far less than now, because now I'm acting, and when I was getting paid it tended to be backstage work. But really, are there any tangible benefits? Why do I do community theater?

I suppose one reason is that I'm pretty good at it. It's a lot of fun to be a big fish in a small pond. I'm not nearly good enough to make it as a paid actor (and most non-Equity theaters I could work at don't do plays I'm interested in anyway). But I can shine in the community theater scene.

Two is the people. This group I'm working with now seems to be a bunch of folks who know what they're doing and take it just seriously enough. In other words, they recognize that there is a whole world out there to which theatre is utterly irrelevant, and maybe that's the way it should be.

Three is the pressure, or lack thereof. One reason I couldn't hack it as a professional actor is that I utterly hate doing the cattle-call auditions where you have to prepare a two-minute monologue, etc.; but that's a major part of getting your foot in the paid door. But most community theaters do cold readings from the script, which I've always been pretty good at.

But is it worth it, for two or three weekends of glory that few people will see anyway? I don't know. I'll tell you in three weekends.

But there is one, awful awful aspect of every show I do, which continually threatens to ruin my life, or at the very least send me into a deep pool of high-school-esque angst. What is it? Well, unfortunately I can't talk about it, because this is a family blog (that is, a blog read by my family), and too much pain would result. So you'll just have to use your imagination.

All parts covered except one.

Today's Post on International Women's Day:

President Bush accused Iran, North Korea and Burma of suppressing women's rights, and said, "America will help women stand up for their freedom, no matter where they live."

So I guess we can expect a massive invasion of South Dakota sometime soon, George?

Trust me on this.

Listen to this song. You won't regret it. (via theynow)

How to fool several million iPod nuts.

Niiiiiice...

Let us now praise the iPod.

How else could you listen to every song in your library in alphabetical order, but through an iPod (or other digital music player)? How else would you discover how many songs you own that begin with the word "surf," and what they sound like back-to-back? (Hint: "Surfin' Bird" kicks "Surfer Girl"'s ass.)

Unfortunately, all things must pass, and so I sold both of my old iPods* and got a new iPod video about a week ago.

Which means, naturally...

* Actually, a pretty good story: I bought a broken iPod off eBay, replaced the hard drive cable, and enjoyed it for a while, what with hacking Linux and stuff. Then, I sold it for a $50 profit.

My mini is supposedly sold, too, but the buyer has not sent payment, two weeks later, and is not responding to emails or eBay messages. So, methinks it will be re-listed soon.

What I'm trying to say.

Kevin Drum:

I just want to make something super clear here. If jumping on the Dubai hysteria bandwagon merely hurt George Bush politically and prompted some additional interest in port security, I'd be all for it. What do I care if the DPW/P&O deal goes through? But the whole thing feeds on a mindless anti-Arab jingoism that's genuinely dangerous, and that's why I'm not joining the fun. As liberals, we're either serious about engaging with the Muslim world in a serious, non-hysterical way or we're not. Which is it?

Damn!

I can only pass on the following from my friend Pat without comment:

Zach -

This is, without a doubt, the best use of Beatle music by anybody ever.

http://www.chrisbliss.com/videopresskit.html

Click on "The Big Finale."

Nolite te bastardes carborundorum.

I gotta say, I'm getting pretty discouraged by all the one-star reviews for my vodcast on iTunes. I mean, sure, it's probably just a bunch of 13-year-old boys--not exactly my target audience--but to click over there, as I did, after spending several days putting a vodcast together, and read that some poor person's IQ dropped by ten points after they watched my show--well, it makes me feel bad, and not just because I'm contributing to the dumbing down of America.

Maybe I just need more gross-out and bloody humor. Amputation jokes are funny, aren't they?

Sigh...

(My star rating is down to two on iTunes. I'll keep you updated as more one-star reviews come in.)

On the stupidity of vodcasting.

Next week, I'm just gonna do a bouncing ball, damn it. What was I thinking?

They Might Be Ringtones

Call connected thru the NSA
Complete transmission thru the NSA
Suspending your rights for the duration of the permanent war...

The recycling bin of history.

Another week with K in Florida, and therefore Me and The Kids alone. Yesterday was a bittersweet day--I made good progress on cleaning out a bookshelf scheduled for Goodwill, but in the process I had to Let Go Of My Youth. You see, I have a whole bunch of manuscripts from friends who, like me, fancied themselves playwrights or authors (well, in fairness, I fancied myself one--they still are), and yesterday I bit the bullet and threw them all out. (Sorry, Clarence! I'll still read your stuff, though...) I drew the line at throwing my own manuscripts away, but everything else went--old plots and scripts for lighting designs, programs from plays I've seen (except for No Man's Land signed by Harold Pinter himself) and performed in... but there comes a point where one just has to admit, one will never read or look at such things again, will one?

Will one?

Argh, what an idiot! How am I going to be remembered without any artifacts of myself? What will D and E pore over to gain clues about their tragically misunderstood father? Where will historians of the future be without papers for the Zachary F. Brewster-Geisz Reading Room at my alma mater?

Come back! Come back, recycling truck! All is forgiven!

As close as I get to live-blogging.

Is Mick Jagger really sounding like Porky Pig, or is it just me?

I can't get no
Satisfaction
I can't get no
Satisfaction
But I twy
And I twy
Lord I twy
Lord I twy...

Why Batgirl?

Get a job. Sha na na na, sha na na na na...

It's very striking to note how completely I fall apart when my wife is away on business. Well, not just me--though there's certainly an element of depression in it--but how my ability to keep house deteriorates. Invariably things wind up scattered, out of place; the kids miss elementary things like homework, cleanup time, baths; and on the day she comes home I scramble to straighten things up to a semblance of, y'know, and all. (I also lose my admittedly atrophied ability to write coherently.)

She goes away on business a goodly amount of time, usually to Florida. And in truth I go away a good amount of time as well, though not for business reasons (unless I were to make a business out of going to comic/3D conventions and film festivals). And even if I spend less time away overnight, I definitely spend more nights away, what with rehearsals and so on, whereas she remains home most every night whether I'm there or not.

Yet, she somehow manages to keep herself, and us, together. And I just can't manage to do that. Maybe it has something to do with getting decent amounts of sleep. For some reason, I always stay up 'til midnight or later when she's gone, even if it isn't my intention. It just happens. And I am not at my best when I'm tired. Whereas as far as I can tell, K just goes to bed when she needs to.

Whatever the reason, K is going to come home around 11 tonight to an absolute pigsty, unless I get my crap together and clean up the house. It makes me wonder: how much do I rely on her on a regular basis, and why have I become so dependent? There's always a certain amount of dependency in marriage, but if there's very little disruption when I'm gone, and huge amounts when she's gone, then what does she depend on me for?

I suppose behind all this is the neverending fear, common to all children of divorced parents I suspect (if not everyone), that she'll suddenly figure out what a fraud I am and take off. Granted, we've already been married longer than my parents were, but that means little. One of my best friends got a divorce after 13+ years of happy spousitude. A friend from college's parents waited until all the kids were out of the house before they split. Now I don't think we're in any danger of splitting, but if we did, how--not just in terms of romance, but in the basic, getting food on the plate and a roof over the head sense--would I live without her?

This is about something specific.

They ain't payin' me enough for this crap.

Too much.

The renovations to our house are finally done, and I've been frantically trying to paint the new rooms so that can be crossed off my to-do list and I can get back to my life.

I have a project which is overdue, and for which people are depending on me. (Boy, that was an awkwardly constructed sentence.) I also have a more personal project, which isn't really on a deadline, but I promised some friends it would be done in November. And of course I have my vodcast which I do each week. There are about six hundred fifty people subscribed to it, so I guess that's people depending on me too (although six hundred fifty wouldn't mean as much to me as five or six people I actually care about). What a time to be sick, have a birthday (last Wednesday), and be tied up in painting and inspections.

So the question is, how can I work all this into a funny animation for next Wednesday? Suggestions welcome. (Yes, I'm talking to [i]you[/i], Clarence and Godfrey.)

Sigh...

Right.. *
by killin for cookies

HAHA lmao
very
freaking
funny
NOT
these are the worst podcasts on iTunes.
horrible
not funny at all
stupid
waste of a MB on your iPod
----
Was this review helpful? Yes / No

And so the Universe ended.

Well, my vodcast is no longer on the front page of the iTunes podcast directory. Ah well. It was fun while it lasted. Now I can begin hemorrhaging viewers, no doubt.

Chugga chugga choo choo.

One of the first things I built after my son's birth in 1999 was a G-scale train set that ran along the walls of his room, on platforms right next to the ceiling. Though we hadn't used it much in recent years, it was something of a cause célèbre among our friends, who whenever they came over would say to the unintiated "Have you seen the train Zach put in his son's room?"

Tonight, the train came down, because we're having the room expanded as part of our general renovation. I'm pretty sad, actually, and I don't know if I'll be able to put it back up or not.

"Time is marching on, and time... is still marching on." -- They Might Be Giants

We're off to Massachusetts for a week. Be good, and ponder the latest vodcast if you're so inclined.

Don't read this if you don't like hearing about parenthood or Number Two.

Hm. If you have iTunes, click on over to the Podcast directory and look down, under the Cartoons tab. Click the arrows to cycle through 'em. You might see someone you know. My circulation has doubled since it appeared. Yow. Pressure.

This past Monday/Tuesday, I had possibly my worst 24 hours that didn't involve clinical depression ever. It began at about 10:30 Monday night, when I was in bed reading The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, and there was a stunning crash from the direction of the stairs. Oh dear. Noodles, the new kitten, had attacked a potted plant and, apparently, won. There were dirt and broken clay pieces all over. I cleaned it up, but it must have somehow aggravated the cold I'm getting, because I spent the rest of the night coughing myself awake.

Then in the morning, the daughter had wet the bed; not too suprising, nor that much of a hardship, since she only just started sleeping without diapers. But sure enough, after getting the boy off to the school bus, we had two more accidents, the last one just at the exact time that we needed to pick the boy up at the bus stop! To make matters worse, that accident included both liquid and solid components. And what a solid! I had to put the girl in the shower to clean it all up, and literally shake the soiled underwear over the toilet to get what I thought were the last remnants down the drain. Then out the door in the nick of time to pick up the son at the bus stop (by law, bus drivers cannot leave kindergarteners at their bus stop alone), the poor daughter's wet hair freezing in the cold.

But the fun wasn't over! I had dropped the soiled underwear in the bathroom sink in my haste, figuring I'd need to rinse it thoroughly before throwing it in the hamper anyway. Turns out all of the solid stuff hadn't gone in the toilet, and was now blocking the drain! I tried to remove it while protecting my fingers with toilet paper; you can imagine how well that worked. So, now the sink was completely clogged, and no Drano anywhere in the house. So, off to the supermarket, children in tow, to get two bottles of Drano. Did I mention that the kitchen is being re-done, and the bathroom sink is the only sink in the house?

We return, and I unclog the sink. Now on a normal day I might be able to ask K to cook for me, being as I'm completely underwater by this point, but a) as mentioned before, we have no sink and therefore can't do much cooking anyway, and b) K happens to be working late today. So, I call in some food from a local pizza joint, and go off again with the kids to pick it up and bring it home. While we're gone, our dog, not content with my being merely frazzled, sends me into hysterics when I come home and find him eating up the food we had left upstairs in storage while our kitchen is remodeled. So, there are crushed ginger snaps everywhere, soiled underpants in the bathroom, two extremely hungry kids waiting for their chicken tenders and French fries, and in the midst of it all, a daddy on the verge of either laughing or crying due to the absurdity of it all.

At this point K calls to see how we're doing, and to her eternal credit she comes right home.

Then, at about 10 P.M., almost exactly 24 hours after all this bad karma began, finally the sun begins to shine; I get a call from the director of a local production of Noises Off, telling me I've been cast in precisely the role I wanted, Garry (John Ritter, for those who saw the movie). So, at least I go to bed happy. But what a day! It's enough to make you check into a hotel.

It's Wednesday!

So it must be a vodcast.

Incidentally, if you're so inclined, you can listen to me make a fool of myself in an interview with 49media (warning: the front page is not safe for work at the moment). We talked about the vodcast and vodcasting in general... not that I'm an expert or anything.

I can now watch my vodcasts on my iPod, and I didn't even have to pay any money to do it! I even dug into the code and programmed normalization and dithering into the grayscale video converter. Now, if I can only get the energy to clean up the code and submit a patch to the developers.

Turkey's Day.

A new vodcast can be found here. This is a good one. If I do say so myself. What are you waiting for? Subscribe, dammit! And while you're at it, give a rating down at VodStock.

Irrelevant but true factoid for the night.

Drywall dust does a serious number on your throat.

Now with 100% more Wednesdayness.

The latest vodcast is up, with all its stand-up goodness available free o' charge. Go ahead, subscribe! You know you want to.

We make no comment on the switch from Monday to Wednesday delivery.

And, incidentally, how is it that Rooster Spice, the Podcast has more subscribers now than when it was actually in operation? Is the Odeo-bot spawning, or something?

Sickening.

Andrew Sullivan has been continually stellar on the subject of American torture. But this post in particular brings it home. If you're not sickened and horrified by what is happening, you're not paying attention.